STRENGTH in numbers is an often used phrase, but if you ask Bathurst Bulldogs captain Mel Waterford, it is one which she would like to see applied more often in reference to Ferguson Cup matches.
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The women's competition run under the Central West Rugby Union banner has certainly grown in recent seasons, but not to the extent where teams are able to play 15-on-15 each Saturday.
Two of Bulldogs' matches this season - against Dubbo Kangaroos and Orange City - saw a sevens format used to decide the outcome as those two clubs did not have the player depth of the Bathurst side.
In round three Bulldogs enjoyed being able to play 10 versus 10 against Mudgee, and this Saturday the clash between Bathurst and Orange Emus at Ashwood Park is expected to be 12-on-12.
That is something which excites Waterford.
"It will be nice to have a good game of rugby and nice to be playing a bit more of a rugby structure," she said.
"At least we have people getting a chance to properly play in their positions and get a little bit more of competition with their positions, which will be good for us going forward too."
Waterford would like to see more games that involve 20 plus players on the field at the same time as it will not only help to grown women's rugby within the zone, but have a flow on effect for the Central West representative team.
It would help not just in terms of having an increased talent pool to draw on, but allow players to compete regularly in a format that is used on the representative level.
"The idea is to play 10-on-10, but you can take to the field with seven," Waterford explained.
"You can play with more, if we have enough and can sustain the game at those numbers, then we can do it. That's the idea, we want to grow the comp back to what it used to be, it used to be a 15s comp.
"The Central West looked at the by-laws and they changed it to allow the women's game to grow. As you could see in our grand final last year, the CSU girls and us had 10 girls sitting on the bench, not getting on the field and not getting a chance play as many minutes as they would like to.
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"This just helps the teams that are recruiting well and growing, it gives them a chance to play each other in a changed format. It helps as lot of the girls are trying to get into the representative levels of the sport.
"It's a bit hard to teach 15s at the 15s trials - at least if you can teach them through the year, it makes a massive difference and it is only going to make Central West stronger and we might finally knock Hunter off.
"We've only drawn once with them in the whole entire history, they have that advantage where they play 15s every week. So if we can get to that stage it is only going to beneficial to the zone as a whole."