NRLW players ‘stressed’ at being left in dark as season set to change
NRLW star and newly appointed RLPA member Hannah Southwell has called on the game to provide an update on this year’s women’s competition, as the NRL looks to delay the competition by up to a month.
Southwell said a number of players were “very stressed” about the fate of the season. The competition had been set to start in conjunction with round 23 of the men’s competition next month.
Southwell said players were eager to find out when and where they would be playing given a majority of the group either have jobs outside of the NRLW or have young children.
“If I’m honest, the stress of it I know has been a lot on a lot of players,” Southwell said. “We need to make sure those players with young children are well compensated and taken care of. That’s the main thing.
“You’ve got to make sure they stay in the game because a lot of those players are mums are quality players and they are just going to lose them. The care factor has to be high.”
On Monday, NRL head of football Graham Annesley said that while the look of the 2021 season remained uncertain, he assured players and fans it would be going ahead.
Jillaroo and Blues star Hannah Southwell has called on the NRL to provide an update on the women’s competition. Credit:Getty
“There are no suggestions of cancelling it. We’re absolutely committed to it and maintaining the integrity of the competition,” he said.
“In many cases, players have commitments to employers and family commitments that make it very difficult for them to go into quarantine or bubble-like situations similar to NRL players at the moment.
“We’re not going to turn it into a nines competition or play it across one weekend. We want to make sure we’ve got a competition that is largely what we had planned for this year.”
Southwell said a condensed season would not be ideal given this year’s season was expanded to seven weeks after years of campaigning.
“I heard that it’s probably going to be reduced,” she said.
“Everything we’ve worked for the last couple of years, there’s so much we’ve sacrificed to get it to where it is, it’s so disheartening. The girls have been through a lot together as a group.”
This week, Southwell became the RLPA’s first female player director in the association’s history, joining Daly Cherry-Evans, Christian Welch, Dale Copley, Sia Soliola and Wade Graham in the role.
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