Rugby fans young and old will return to St. Albert next weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary of women’s rugby in St. Albert.
Hundreds are expected to be at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club July 27 to celebrate 30 years of women’s rugby at the club.
The all-day event includes free rugby games by the club’s youth, women’s, and men’s teams, face-painting, a bouncy castle, and a paid dinner provided by the Olive Garden, said event co-organizer Kendra Fiddler.
Fiddler said the dinner will include speeches and stories from women’s league alumni, as well as the unveiling of the new Murphy-Henkel Cup for good sportspersonship. The award is named in memory of former players Bridget Murphy and Anniesa Henkel. The dinner will also feature limited edition cans of beer from Endeavour Brewing emblazoned with the 30th Anniversary of St. Albert Women’s Rugby logo.
How it started
St. Albert did not have a formal women’s rugby league until 1994, although some girls did play co-ed games with the boys as early as 1987, said longtime city rugby coach Roger Scott. Prior to then, women had to join teams in Edmonton or other parts of Alberta if they wanted to play in adult leagues.
In December 1993, a group of rugby fans led by St. Albert Rugby Club member Daryl Newstead proposed the club start a women’s team.
Newstead, now 56, said he simply thought St. Albert’s women should have an opportunity to play rugby.
“There were a few traditionalists that did not believe women should play,” he recalled, but most of the club favoured the deal.
Writing in the Dec. 15, 1993 Gazette, reporter Jeff Hansen described Newstead’s proposal as “the most controversial rugby story since the St. Albert club voted over what brand of draft beer would be served on tap at the bar.” Calling the club’s “deafening secrecy” over the idea “bogus,” he denounced the reluctance of some of the club’s old guard to let women into the game as sexist and Neanderthalic.
“If girls can skate in the St. Albert minor hockey system, try out for the St. Albert Storm football team, duke it out in the St. Albert Boxing Club, crush the wrestling mats at Lorne Akins Junior High, then why can’t they play rugby?” he asked.
Edmontonian Fran Blake, now 59, said she joined the St. Albert women’s rugby team at age 28 after hearing about it in a local bar. She later became the team’s first captain.
“A lot of us didn’t know what the rules of the game were,” she recalled, and many of the players were still in high school.
“We were atrocious in the first year,” Blake said.
The team played a year of exhibition matches (finishing with a 5-5 record, the Gazette’s archives show) before starting league play in 1995, Scott said. St. Albert also got its first high school girls rugby team that year in the form of the Bellerose Bulldogs, which drew players from both Bellerose Composite and Paul Kane.
Blake said there was a lot of skepticism at first that the women’s league would take off, but the league’s skill and highly technical play style soon won fans over. The league got a big boost in 1996 when the club co-hosted the Canada Cup, which brought women’s teams from four nations to St. Albert and Edmonton.
Going strong
Today, the St. Albert club has a thriving women’s league of about 80 players split between four teams, Fiddler said. Many players have gone on to join international leagues, with alumnus Janna Slevinsky playing for Team Canada.
Blake said she left the St. Albert league in 1998 but kept playing rugby during her years abroad in the U.K. and New Zealand. She rejoined the club for a season in 2019 and was seriously considering coming back next year for one last season.
“Every time I watch rugby, I want to get out there and play,” she said.
Rugby is a sport where you can join a team anywhere in the world and feel immediately welcome, Blake said.
“There’s no other sport like it.”
Visit sarfc.ca for details on the celebration.
