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Five Lives, Rugby Union Weekly.

Well, welcome to the first of what will be an ongoing theme on the Rugby Union weekly for the next few weeks, building into September as well, because it is nearly there.

The Women's Rugby World Cup starts on Friday the 22nd of August.

It's when England play the USA in Sunderland. And for this episode, we're going to be looking

back at the journey of women's rugby, particularly for England. I am Sarah Orchard, and you're going

to be hearing the voice of World Cup winners, the 1994 world champion Giselle Maver and 2014 champion

Rachel Burford. You'll hear from the current Red Rose, Abby Ward, who's going to be going

to her third Rugby World Cup. And I'm also delighted to say that I'm also going to be joined by

none other than Ellen Aldroyd for this journey. Hello, Ellie. Hello, Sarah. Thank you so much

for being here with me. And I think

it's really important that you are here because so many people listening to this live and breathe

rugby, but maybe they don't get to hear as much about women's rugby as I do. So what is it you're

looking forward to hearing about? Well, I'm quite looking forward to charting how the World Cup has

developed since the very first tournament back in 1991, which was

when I started with my career in radio sports. So it feels like a very long time ago. But actually

at that stage, women's sport, women's team sport particularly, was so off the radar for so many

people. It was not, you know, there was no encouragement for women to think that they

could have a professional career playing team sport. And so, so those pioneers from 1991,

all the way through to the very professional setup that we have. And I remember what a,

what a big moment it was when England won the World Cup in 2014. And we started talking

more about women's team sport in a very serious way.

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