LEEDS – Rugby league can often be accused of being a game that obsesses over its history a little too much. We take the George Hotel in Huddersfield – or Bateman’s Hotel in Sydney – as ground zero for the identity of the sport, and the actions there as proof positive of the foundational myths we choose to believe.
But an archive of one of the most important moments of the recent history of the game lay, until recently, in an attic in Yorkshire, unknown and unheralded.
For a sport that prides itself on being a perpetual underdog, the story contained therein might be among the most against-the-odds narrative of any in the more than 130 years of rugby league.
The attic in question belonged to Jackie Sheldon, one of the pioneers of women’s rugby league, and the story is that of the first ever women’s Tests, played in 1996, when a self-funded and unrecognised Great Britain Lionesses side defeated Australia 2-1.
For most of the intervening years, the history lay only in the memories of those who participated and above the house of one of the coaches from that inaugural tour.
With England set to draw a record crowd for a women’s game in the Northern Hemisphere for their World Cup opener against Brazil – outselling both the Kangaroos at the same venue – that tale is now set to be told on a wider scale with an archive, known as the Jackie Sheldon Collection, that will accompany the Women’s World Cup all the way to the final in Manchester on November 19th.
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The exhibit is organised by Julia Lee, who refereed the First Test at Canberra and now sits on the Women’s and Girls Group with the International Rugby League. It will be open to the public in Leeds, Wigan and York to coincide with England Women’s games.
“There was all this stuff in my attic,” said Sheldon, who was an assistant coach in 1996 and later head coach. “I looked it all and thought: nobody is interested at the moment, but someday, somebody might be. So I packed it away in big boxes and it’s been there for 20-odd years.”
“Julia asked if anyone knew the results and who played in the first internationals, so I said: I’ve got it all, it’s in my attic. When I dragged it all out and showed them, they all said ‘wow’. It’s valuable, it’s history and tells a story of the women’s game and what we had to do.”
The women were unsanctioned by the Rugby Football League (RFL) and had to self-organise, as well as fundraising their own travel. They set up their own structure, outside of the RFL, to organise their own affairs and control their own destiny.
Lee herself was involved in the organisation of the women’s game in the UK from the very beginning, and gave context where the women were in 1995, when a challenge was issued from Australia.
“When Women’s rugby league started in 1986, nobody knew what to do with it,” said Lee. “It was that era, during the second wave of feminism, where they knew they couldn’t stop women playing but they didn’t know where it fitted.
“There was a tour in 1989 where they got to France and found the French only played touch – they got there and ended up playing each other and an under-17s team.
“They even played at Old Trafford – where the final will be this year – between Premiership finals. They only got 20 minutes, if that, in between the two men’s games.
“When the invite came in 1995, Jackie and Anne Thompson began organising. They start two years out with training and fundraising, because it was £1000 to go to Australia.
“There was a GB committee to organise it. Ten weeks out, they discovered the guy who was meant to be doing it hadn’t even booked flights so Nikki Carter had to become team manager to get stuff done.”
One of the first names on the team sheet was Lisa McIntosh. She was named captain, in the process becoming the first black woman to captain England or Great Britain in any sport.
“We never thought it was historic for one minute,” said McIntosh. “We were a group of girls who loved playing rugby. When we played against each other, it was a battle, but when we got together, it was buzzing.
“We went out there with no idea what to expect. We could have got trounced, but we’d have gone out and enjoyed the experience. None of us had ever been to Australia, some probably hadn’t flown before. We wanted to do our best and enjoy it – the fact we won it was totally unexpected.”
McIntosh was a duty manager at a leisure centre in Halifax and could gain access to the gym, while Lee was a student at Leeds Met University – ironically, where the England Women are now based – and ask if the team could use the facilities there for free.
Despite the huge challenges faced, Sheldon and head coach Ian Harris assembled a professional coaching staff, with strength & conditioning and sports psychology.
“Even though we didn’t get funding or facilities, it was so professional,” said Sheldon. “We ran it on a professional basis because the volunteers could contribute and the commitment was outstanding, as were the skills.
“I kept records of training programmes, selection criteria, media, everything. All my notes on tour, the results, who was selected, who scored. I had so many notes. I’d had players who weren’t playing out taking tackle counts for stats. It was all there, hand-written.
“It was as a record for myself so we could progress and I could look back from one tour to another to reflect on what went well and what didn’t.
“We had so many people involved who were professionals, giving their time up. One of the Women’s Olympic coaches came in to work with the players and told us we were ten years ahead of them.”
The professionalism was such that Harris ended up writing a Masters’ thesis on his work with the Lionesses and, years later, the Great Britain men’s national coach came in to take notes.
“Ian’s attention to detail was second to none,” said Lee. “It was so professional in terms of fitness and conditioning. Back then, it was a community game played by amateurs and they went out drinking after the game because rugby was for fun, but now they were representing their country.
“When I began at the RFL in 2000, the men weren’t set up like the women. (GB coach) David Waite had to come borrow balls and cones from me. The women always had a sports psychologist, which the men weren’t doing.”
The levels of the Australians were no match for the Lionesses. GB lost the first test in Canberra but won in Sydney and Brisbane to take out the series.
“We beat a Sydney select first and ran riot,” said captain McIntosh. “That’s when the Australians thought ‘these aren’t that bad’.
“With us, we were very professional. I remember we were in the same accommodation as the Australian girls and they were big drinkers. We had a drink ban until after games.
“We weren’t really interested: when we had downtime, we went to Manly Beach because we wanted to see where Home & Away was!”
Sheldon was named Sports Coach of the Year by The Times, but beyond local interest stories, they were largely ignored by the sport. When the authorities tried to pay tribute, they got it all wrong.
“They were stars in Australia, but when they got back, it was like nothing had happened,” said Lee. “The RFL invited them to the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley and put them in white tracksuits and asked them to dance on the pitch for pre-match entertainment.”
The lack of recognition continued for years, with a second victory over Australia in 2002, plus tours to New Zealand and two World Cups in 2000 and 2003 not sanctioned by the governing bodies.
“Nobody knew about the story,” said Lee. “If you don’t know about it, you don’t ask about it, so it became forgotten history.
“When I started hearing about the first Women’s teams, the cap numbers and the best players, I thought: there’s a whole load of history you’re not even looking into, phenomenal players with great wins.
“The 2000 and 2003 tournaments weren’t recognised as World Cups, they were forgotten about and that history was erased, but Jackie had it all to hand.
“It’s given us a fantastic base, and then there’s the trophies, medals and tangible stuff about what it was like. Now I get women donating stuff. They’d not even told their kids that they’d played for Great Britain.”
The fight went on for 25 years and was won only recently. Lisa McIntosh, along with fellow pioneers Brenda Dobek and Sally Milburn, were recently inducted into the RFL Hall of Fame, while Sheldon and Lee are recognised on the official Roll of Honour for off-field contributions.
There will be an event before England’s final group game with Papua New Guinea on November 9th in their honour – Lee joked that she had been asked by the original Lionesses if they needed to wear white tracksuits – in which they will be given their caps and heritage numbers.
“It’s brilliant what the England women have now, and we were part of it,” said McIntosh. “All our bucket-collecting, sponsored walks and car boot sales set the pathway.
“The England girls are based in the same place where we played, they get all the best facilities and they’ve got people paying to watch them. It means a lot to us that we played a part in that.”
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