IN early 2018 when CSU fielded a women's team at the Blue Mountains rugby 7s tournament, club officials had no idea it would spark a passion that would lead to a massive influx of players.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The women who took part in that tournament decided they liked contact sport and wanted more of it.
That led to CSU ending a five-year absence from the Central West Rugby Union's women's fold and since the decision was made to return, the 'Custards' have grown in numbers and talent.
Their maiden season the CSU women made it to the grand final of the Ferguson Cup, while this year it took a late Orange Emus penalty goal in the preliminary final to deny them a repeat appearance in the decider.
With that success has come added interest, so much so that CSU vice-president Daniel Adamson feels there is the potential for there to be twin Custards outfits in the near future.
"Our women's numbers are growing at an unreal rate, we are pretty keen to think about even if Central West will allow us the potential of having two teams," he said.
"We had to send a few girls back at the start of this year because the popularity of the sport around uni is pretty big at the moment."
READ MORE: CSU women claim rugby 7s gold in a thriller
Unlike the men's competition, the rules of the Ferguson Cup permit teams to play 10-on-10 should they not have enough for 15-a-side.
That means clubs with a large squad like CSU can have huge benches for some games. Still, given the impact of university holidays each season, Adamson feels there needs to be around 40 players before a request for two sides is made.
"It would be pretty unreal. We've discussed the idea because there are lot of women at CSU Bathurst, but obviously we have people from all different parts of Australia and they move to Bathurst for uni," he said.
"That means university holidays always kick us in the backside a little bit. This season when 30 girls turned up we thought we'd stick with the one team because in that holiday period we might only get 10 or 11 people.
"If we could get 40 or even 50, that's when we'd go to the Central West and say 'Look this is how many people we've got, can we look at having a second team'."