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Resilient Sharks plot new course
Oct 9 2007 by Richard Neale, The Journal
ONE women’s rugby team is venturing into the unknown in an attempt to pioneer a new era for the game by becoming a self-sustained club.
Darlington Mowden Park Sharks have suffered relegation and had to move from their former Thirsk base because the club they were affiliated with didn’t run sides for girls or women. But they found the perfect new venue in Darlington, with Mowden Park already running two girls’ sides. And the adversity of the past has just made their determination to succeed in the future even stronger.
Player Susan Hughes is in charge of obtaining funding for the club and raising its profile within the community. She is hoping to eventually entice paying spectators to watch the team compete for promotion back to the Women’s Premiership, something that shouldn’t be difficult if the team continue to come up with more scores like the one last weekend against Hartlepool – a 102-5 win involving 16 tries.
“Only about 20 fans turned up at the weekend and that’s gutting,” she said. “For the club there could have been 200 people putting money behind the bar if we’d got that kind of crowd and it could have been a successful day for everyone rather than just us.”
The idea of having a regular turnover of supporters paying to watch the sport is at the heart of Hughes’ philosophy. And while she understands it will be a long road, she believes there is nothing to lose by trying and everything to gain. “We’re trying to work out how we can become a self-sufficient club. The men have been doing it for years but at some point they made that crossover which we are trying to achieve,” she said. “We are looking around for sponsorship for next year but at the moment we’re just trying to show everyone how much we want to do this.
“If we can get around 300 supporters watching us every home game and charge them to watch then we can start to become self-financing.”
Hughes has estimated it would cost £15,000 per year to run the Sharks, which pays for the basics such as transport, balls and kit. But she believes a little extra effort would go a long way. “At the moment if we play in London the club will pay for the bus there and back, but the players still have to pay for the petrol to get them to training every week.”
The big picture for Hughes, well into the future, is appearance fees paid to players – something that would make the club semi-professional. And even the stories of men’s teams thousands of pounds in debt after taking such steps don’t put her off.
“We’ve got nothing to lose really so I’m not going to worry about things going wrong, we’re pretty resilient,” she said. “We are going to do the best we can and to try and achieve it.” The big ideas have come after a new start for the club, beginning when they were relegated from the Premiership – a league with women’s sides affiliated to such rugby big guns as Sale – despite assurances there would be no relegation because of problems caused by the women’s World Cup.
“Teams didn’t have women who could just come into the side and replace those who had gone on international duty so there were lots of teams playing under-strength,” she said. “We were told by the RFUW that because of the situation there would be no promotion or relegation. We lost two players to the national side so we started playing people in different positions. We lost a lot of games but we didn’t think it mattered.”
However, the decision not to relegate clubs was overturned at the end of the season, meaning the Sharks went down. Everybody at the club was, obviously, less than impressed with the decision, and were thinking of taking the RFUW to court to appeal the decision. However, after a meeting they decided it would be best to do their talking on the pitch. The weekend victory demonstrates that things have gone well so far. And if Hughes’ plans come to fruition, things could get even better in the future.
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