Warriors host 9s girls festival

Wigan Warriors Community Foundation hosted a 9s Rugby League girls festival last week.

Four local amateur clubs from Wigan and Leigh participated in the event, which took place at Wigan’s Soccer Dome pitches last Wednesday.

The festival was in preparation for the ‘War of the Roses’ festival in August which will include two amateur clubs from Wigan and two from Leeds.

From the Wigan’s 9s festival last week, the two top teams after three games were chosen to go on to compete in the War of the Roses competition.

Ashton Bears, Leigh Miners, Orrell St James and Wigan St Patricks all took part with the first two winning and progressing to the August event. Ashton went unbeaten and won the festival, while Leigh finished second with just one defeat.

The War of the Roses festival will take place on Wednesday 25th August at Robin Park Arena at 6:30pm – before the Warriors men first team play Leeds at the DW Stadium. Full details of how to watch the festival before the game at the DW will be released in due course.

Rachel Thompson, Warriors girls development officer, spoke of the importance of events like these improving and promoting girls Rugby League for the present and the future.

She said: “Events like this are really important for us to engage and give something back to the community. The festival also allows the girls to participate in a different style of rugby by implementing a few of the 9’s Rugby League rules.

“The girls seemed to thoroughly enjoy it and it was a great opportunity for myself and the foundation staff to watch the girls play and see how they have developed as teams going through a hard time of not playing for so long.”

Wednesday 14 July 2021