Wales Women

The stage has rarely matched the results, but the choice of stage says something about where the union has decided the team belongs.

Wales played their first official international on 5 April 1987, away to England at Pontypool Park, and lost 4–22 under captain Liza Burgess. Welsh players had already turned out for a combined Great Britain side the year before; the 1987 match was the point at which Wales stopped borrowing a shirt and started wearing their own.

The Triple Crown, beating England, Ireland and Scotland in the same Six Nations, came in 2009 and again in 2021, that it now reads as a level the squad can be expected to hold rather than a peak. A Grand Slam has still not followed. At World Cup level the high point sits further back: fourth in 1994, a finish never repeated across editions that have otherwise ranged from seventh to thirteenth. Wales also hosted the very first Women's Rugby World Cup, in 1991, and finished ninth in their own tournament.

England remain the fixture that matters most, an annual Six Nations meeting with no separate name attached to it, alongside the older, looser rivalry with Scotland. Non Evans left the biggest mark on the record books, 87 caps. The turning point off the pitch came in November 2021, when the union handed full-time professional contracts to twelve players from January 2022, Alisha Butchers and Jasmine Joyce among them.