Bathurst Bulldogs women are helping to build for the future

A concept developed by some of the Bulldogs senior women and coach Josh Murphy, the academy will run two programs of six weeks in length, the first of which commence on May 16.

Mel Waterford, who has been an integral part of the Bulldogs women winning four consecutive premierships, is delighted the club can help further develop the young talent within the region.

"It's a great opportunity for the young girls and even some of the girls that are new to rugby, to learn some skills and increase what they might already know. It's really, really exciting," Waterford said.

During her more than decade-long involvement with Central West Rugby Union, Waterford has seen the women's ranks expand from a handful of club and non-regular games to now having three premierships and a strong representative level record.

It's growth she is eager to continue and feels the academy can play a key role in doing just that.

"There's definitely always been the talent around, but there's definitely more interest now for girls when it comes to contact sport. It was probably something they didn't think about before, but now they've got the opportunity to try it, give it a go," Waterford said.

"There are so many talented young girls out there and they just want to get in and play rugby, but there's just not the opportunity once they get past 14 to play in any competition. So this gives them a way to learn some skills, grow numbers and hopefully we can do something with the junior competition between the 12s and 16s before they get to opens."

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Waterford said the recent Jakiya Whitfeld Cup sevens competition has helped spark interest and the academy is a way for them to stay involved.

"We thought it would be a great opportunity for them to have an extra day where they could have basic skill focus, try to understand tackling, mauling, rucking and ball skills better," she said.

"There's a really big interest in the 12-17 years girls, a lot of the interest came off the sevens comp, the Jakiya Whitfeld Cup, a lot of girls got a taste of rugby through that and wanted more.

"Orange City have done it over the last couple of years, got young girls together and really grown their numbers from that, we just thought it was a good opportunity to do that in Bathurst and try and grow the competition."

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