Rugby league in the Tweed district and NSW Northern Rivers enters a new chapter this weekend when the Gold Coast Airport Tweed Seagulls inaugural women’s team takes the field for the first time in the South-East Queensland division 1 competition on Saturday.
The Seagulls women’s team, coached by former New Zealand Ferns coach Kelvin Wright, takes on Easts Tigers at Langlands Park in Brisbane at 6pm, after the Tigers-Hunters Intrust Super Cup clash.
The Tweed squad, which has come together well after expressions of interested were only called last December, includes two players from the premiership-dominating Burleigh Bears team Kiwi-born Josina Singapu and Shelley Fox.
Other key recruits are Chantelle Schofield, who has represented Auckland and the Cook Islands, and Canecia Sims, part of the famous Sims rugby league family. ‘CJ’, as she is known, played for Ipswich Brothers last season after representing Australia in gridiron football.
The squad at the disposal of Wright, who has also served as the New Zealand men’s team assistant coach and head coach of the Junior Kiwis, features several league tag and touch footy representative players.
“It’s an exciting new chapter for the club at a time where the women’s game has become the big growth sector of rugby league, capped by the establishment of the WNRL competition last August,” said Seagulls CEO Paul Stephenson.
“It was borne from the new strategic plan developed last year, which included a priority to build a women’s program, by our board of directors that welcomed its first women’s director in Brigid Davey in 2018.
“To have the Gold Coast Airport sponsor the team and begin an association with our club, and to be able to enlist Kelvin Wright as the coach, adds a lot of credibility to this exciting development and we are very appreciative of their belief in what we are trying to achieve.
“Kelvin has done a great job bringing the girls together in such a short time and it will be the start of an exciting new chapter when a women’s team wears the black and white for the first time on Saturday.”
The team goes into the game with the benefit of two trial matches but with several teenagers in the side, and several playing their first competition rugby league match, there is expected to be vast improvement as the 14-round, 12-match season progresses.
The competing teams are: Easts, Tweed Heads, Burleigh Bears, Wests Brisbane, Toowoomba Valleys, Souths Logan and Brothers Ipswich.
The Seagulls play their first home match at Piggabeen Sports Complex the following Saturday (April 6) against Toowoomba at 3pm.
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