Weekend Edition: Russian dolls, fax machines & legal threats - the making of the first Women's Rugby World Cup

0:02Gabby:This is a Global Player original podcast. Well, we're into the second round of the Women's Rugby World Cup, but just 35 years ago, the competition didn't exist. Then up stepped our guest today, Alice Cooper. Alice and three other women fought to set up the first ever Women's Rugby Union World Cup in 1991. The organisers of the first ever Women's World Cup have persisted in the face of seemingly insuperable odds and by the sheer force of their determination and enthusiasm have succeeded in getting the event up and running. The opening games were played last weekend and matches have been continuing...

0:42So it took players selling Russian dolls and vodka, organising everything over fax, and Alice eventually losing her job. But they did it and she's here to tell us how.

0:51Gabby:Welcome to the Sports Agent.

1:01the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman

1:07Gabby:hello mark hi gabby very football heavy week wasn't it but that's that's it was where we're at i suppose at the moment still at the early stages of the season yeah there's uh there's a ruckus going on at nottingham forest and we we got into that didn't we on tuesday is it going to be the owner, the manager, or maybe the director of football who comes out on top in this one. We chat to David Prutton, the former Forest Midfielder, all about that and Sky Broadcaster, of course. He was quite categorical and calling it absurd that he'd walk away from it. He's in an elite club of 20 people that around the world, everybody wants to come here to have one of those 20 jobs.

1:47Gabby:Everybody on the planet wants to come and have one of those 20 jobs. it would be madness of sorts to say thanks i'm leaving over a a kind of over adama traore i mean no but that's but but generally yeah yeah you're right no you're right if that is where where the sort of falling out began just by saying it it sounds ridiculous is it also to do with his continued communication with marco silver and also having allegedly conversations with Don Postacoglu as well. Oliver Glasner, I think, has got a year left in his contracts. Brendan Rodgers. And he's expressed frustration as well. Yeah, I suppose that's the other side of it.

2:27Gabby:But maybe that's, if you are a billionaire businessman, maybe it's your want to keep your employees on their toes and kind of go, he's doing a good job. What do you mean he's doing a good job? I'm doing a good job. Yeah, you are, but he's also doing a good job. So just keep doing your good job and we'll, you know what I mean, everything will be rosy. I mean, you mentioned Jose Mourinho being one of the names linked, if you need to watch it. Can you imagine? I mean, oh my God. I mean, oh my God. Marion Ackes and Jose Mourinho. I think that's a beautiful combination. Honestly, it's perfect. Match made in heaven.

3:00Gabby:Speaking of ruckus, Lloyd Griffith joins us as well to talk about Grimsby knocking Manchester United out of the Carabao Cup for some reason. We're still putting a clip of that in this pod. I don't know why. Could be one of the big stories of the week, chappers. I know you're not surprised anymore. I'm not, I'm just world, I mean, I'm world weary. You're weary. In general, but certainly when it comes to United. What a night. I can't get over it. We haven't played Manchester United since 1948. We looked at their starting 11 and their bench, and it was unbelievable. Like, they were going for it. And we played them off the park for like 50, 60 minutes.

3:39Gabby:Our first half especially. I've had many a nice night at London Park. I don't think it's going to get much better than that. I don't think it's going to get much better than that. Lloyd, have you got any sympathy for Mark and Manchester United fans who've spent hundreds of millions trying to get this team to play in a style of football that Amarim obviously is quite wedded to and they come to Blondale Park and, as you say, get played off the park? A little bit of sympathy? Chappers takes me at 10th century saying idiot. So absolutely, I absolutely love Chappers, but I've got no sympathy for him or any Man United fans.

4:14Gabby:I don't. I think it is worrying. I've done a couple of Man United podcasts this morning already and you do wonder what is going on there. Obviously, there's this whole talk about the restructuring and the penny pinching and stuff like that. There's a lot, obviously, behind the surface that we're not aware of that needs to get sorted out. Look, I think first and foremost, they need to get a better goalkeeper. Manchester United are just known for having good goalkeepers and they haven't had a good one for a long, long time. Honestly, I don't work for Grimmstown Football Club. but I'm happy to broker a deal.

4:47Gabby:If you want Christy Pym for£35 million, I'll drive you there. And we had a fascinating chat with The Telegraph's Sam Wallace and Temerson Williams, who was Max Dowman's coach at youth level. It feels funny saying that about a 15-year-old. I mean, how much younger does youth level go down to? And we talked all about academy talent and actually it wasn't just Max that was making headlines, was it, this week? Rio and Gamoa, Mark, was snatching the headlines. And there's an element of kind of, it's a bit more sinister, isn't it? Kind of behind the scenes stuff that can kind of go on with this academy talent.

5:23Gabby:Yeah, it's big clubs looking to take talent from other academies if they don't feel that there's a pathway for a talent there. The big European clubs, German clubs in particular, looking at Premier League young talent as well. I mean, we heard from them both. You know, it is a dog-eat-dog market. It's very hard. It's very hard, especially when you have to speak with parents, because there are certain things you can't say at that particular point in time. It's only when parents have left the club and maybe their child has left that I can then have more open conversations with them behind the scenes.

6:01What kind of things are you talking about?

6:02Gabby:Why maybe their son isn't playing? Why isn't their son playing in an older age group, for example? Why aren't they getting an opportunity? but why can't you tell them because the pathway you're still trying to help them to trying to encourage them that look they're still a pathway at this club but you may know that okay six months time if something doesn't change you'll try to be open with them but if something doesn't change maybe they might be out of the club a club scared of letting someone go that six months later looks looks sensational at arrival exactly spot on mark absolutely spot on One thing that does feel that it's changed is players wanting to know from a very, very early age what their pathway is to the first team.

6:47Gabby:And if they can't see that pathway, then they will be off. I mean, Engemo is a perfect example, really, who was at Chelsea and is now at Liverpool. But that has come in, I would argue, over the last decade, maybe, since the Bundesliga club started sniffing around. That is what people tell me, that parents and players are much more prepared to shop around. Don't forget you can catch up with every episode of The Sports Agents on YouTube, Global Player or wherever you get your pods. Just remember to hit subscribe or follow and don't forget to rate and review as well. Where are you this weekend? So I'm at Northampton at Franklin's Gardens both days, Saturday and Sunday.

7:27England play Samoa at five o 'clock on Saturday and Samoa was smashed by Australia last weekend. So I think it's going to be a bit of a rout. But we're expecting the head coach, John Mitchell, to make almost a complete change in his line-up.

7:41Gabby:But that's what he's tried to do all the way through, isn't it? His tenure as England coach. I mean, when we've talked before about the England women's team, they've always, under him, it feels like they've always had that option of basically playing two different sides. Such talent. I mean, you know, two of their tens are injured at the moment and, you know, arguably any one of the three can start. So, you know, they've got such talent across the board. So even, you know, with big changes, they're expected to have a comprehensive victory. But those players will also be pushing themselves forward because they all want to play in that team come the knockout stages.

8:12Because I think when we get to the quarters and semifinals, they will then start to settle into a 15 that he thinks can win the World Cup, which is the aim, of course. And then Sunday, I'm looking forward to this one, actually, Ireland against Spain, because Ireland put up a really good fight and a performance against Japan last weekend. Good win. And I would say they're the team who have really, over the last three or four years, just come on so much with so much great talent. They were in the doldrums a few years ago. They looked like a team that wasn't supported and they weren't. And this is a point where Irish rugby on the men's side were dominant in world rugby, beating the All Blacks.

8:43And the women's side just looked like a really poor relation. And they have really, really come on. And that actually relates to our story today, doesn't it, on this special bonus episode?

8:52Gabby:Yeah, one of the pioneers who set up the first ever Women's Rugby World Cup. Alice Cooper is next. The Sports Agents.

9:03Gabby:The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Alice, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for being on the pod. Just before we started recording, you were talking off air to Gabby about being at the Stadium of Light for England's opener against the USA last week. So how did you feel being there, given everything that you fought for 30 years ago? Oh, it's felt pretty surreal, actually. If you think the journey of 34 years, it felt really no small sense of pride, but fairly surreal. Should we kind of go back historically? It's interesting because obviously 1991 being the first women's rugby World Cup.

9:49It was only 1987 that the first men's rugby World Cup actually happened. So it's not a comparable story with women's football in many ways, you know, because I think often people are trying to kind of align what this could mean for the Red Roses compared to the Lionesses. And actually, women's rugby wasn't banned and it just wasn't something that you could do freely around the country because there just weren't many women's rugby clubs. So to have that idea in 1991, you know, that was quite left field and must have been quite out there to the rugby world. Well, I think it was a bit of a shock for them, actually.

10:24It had come out of there'd been a rugby fest in New Zealand and the Russians had come to that and the Americans had come to that. and then there was a general kind of European Cup that was held at Bourg-en-Brest in France in early 1990, I think. But the Americans, Canadians, Japanese, all sorts of people said, well, can we come to the European Cup? Well, it's not really a European Cup if we do that. So Debs Griffin went and presented the idea of a World Cup to the Women's Rugby Football Union, who at that time were in no way affiliated or associated with the RFU or the IRB or anybody. We were just doing our stuff over here.

11:00And the WRFU said, oh, that's a good idea. Off you go and do it. So we all played together. The four of us all played together at Richmond. And she kind of picked us out of the crowd and said, you, you, and you. Because that was the deal. She would only do it if she could have her own team. And off we went. How do you go about starting a global tournament? Well, one thing you've got to remember is it's pre-digital times. No internet. How on earth do you find if a country actually has a women's team? So it took a lot of literal snail mail and say, do you happen to know anyone plays? Literally kind of airy conversations.

11:34Before then, there was no world rankings. There'd been the odd maybe twice a year there'd be an international. So there was no sense of who could play, who did play, and who played to an international standard. So it was all fairly who wants to come, basically. Who can come and who wants to come and who can afford to come.

11:50Gabby:So did you just have a list of countries and work through them? Yeah, yeah. And all sorts of surprising people to like them, you know, Sweden, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Japan had a big, big Japanese cohort of clubs. Who knew? But Australia didn't play. New Zealand did play. America, Canada. And America were actually miles ahead. They were about 15 years ahead because they weren't allowed to play American football. Right. So they played rugby instead. But this wasn't all plain sailing. You did have a bit of pushback. It wasn't people just opening the door and going, yeah, go on, go. Let's go get yourself a World Cup.

12:28Pushback, I think, is an understatement, to be fair. Tell us a bit about that. Well, first of all, we had to find someone to do it. It was South Wales, who were trying to actively promote sports tourism, said, oh, we've got all these little clubs all around South Wales. And South Glamorgan Council stepped up and said, yeah, yeah, we'll do an opening ceremony and a closing dinner for you. And the Cardiff County Council did stuff. They were very, very welcoming. And they had one key thing was we needed student accommodation for the teams. Because everyone was coming in, everyone was having to pay for their own kit, their own travel, their own accommodation, their own food.

13:03I mean, it's an enormous outlay, particularly for the New Zealanders. They cost them about 5 ,000 New Zealand dollars. So they all had raffles and cake sales and God knows what to get each individual to the UK.

13:16Gabby:And problems for other teams, like were they still the Soviet team? They were still the Soviet team then. So a problem for them, because they couldn't get money out of the country, could they? They couldn't, they couldn't, but they did manage to get five crates of stuff, which consisted of quite a lot of cucumbers, which they ate a lot of, and all sorts of knick-knacks that you couldn't possibly want, crappy little watches, flags, Russian dolls, caviar, and vodka. And they flogged them to sort of pay for their... Yeah, yeah, they did. They did. And so everybody had to come up with their own ways of making money.

13:54So what were you guys doing? We were just paying for ourselves. It was this slight hilarity of sort of expenses. Well, there's no one to claim it from. There was no money in the pot. So we just paid. At this point, when the energy started going and the ball starts rolling, did World Rugby, did the RFU, did nobody start thinking, oh, this is something that we should get behind here? Oh, quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. Debs got called in to the IRFB in Bristol, and she'd just had a baby. She had a six-week-old baby, who wasn't terribly keen on being there at all, as you might imagine. And the IRB thought it was denigrating the sport and would devalue the upcoming 91 Men's World Cup.

14:41Whereas our view was, actually, we're expanding... And that was going to be in England, I think, wasn't it? The 91? I think 19-1 was it. Yeah, I think you're right. And our view was we're doing exactly the opposite. We're actually expanding interest in sport by women playing it and women coming to watch it. And what's the problem? Then they threatened to... My lovely cousin James, who is a professional graphic designer, had produced a lovely logo for us. IRB thought it was too light theirs. So they bounced it and threatened to sue us. Wow. So we had to rethink... James had to rethink the logo.

15:16And they wouldn't approve it. So that held up merchandising, printing the programmes, printing the tickets, getting stuff done. Everything was held up while we're kind of waiting for the RLB to make their flaming mines up. Anyway, but eventually they did approve it. And it was about six weeks before the tournament. It made it very squeaky bum time.

15:36Gabby:You must have been fuming, weren't you? Because I think in your very first answer here, you said that no governing body had any affiliation with the WRFU at that time. They were very much on their own in what they were doing. Yes. And nobody else were bothering. And then all of a sudden, they do bother, but in a negative way. You were fuming, I'm guessing. We were just stuffed. We just had to get on with it. But it did hold things up. Don't forget we're organising this around our day jobs. Yeah, as you've pointed out before, without technology, effectively. Without technology. A fax machine was about as sophisticated as it got.

16:15And so it was pretty, pretty difficult to do at the best of times. But so we've got some in the Rug Museum at Twickenham, there's evidence of the shirty letters. Really? Yes. So obviously you managed to get 12 teams, all hosted in South Wales, as you said there. and you said before as well USA were actually surprisingly to you guys one of the most kind of sophisticated teams in terms of the training and the amount of players they had and ended up beating England in the final 3 ,000 people came to that final yeah 3 ,500 so actually build it and they did come yeah absolutely it didn't give us enough money to break even there was a big debt left at the end that we four were personally liable for and you had to pay off did you?

17:01no there was a sponsorship company who had come in to help us get sponsorship and didn't because at the time the general view was it was a participation sport not a spectator sport so we didn't get any sponsorship at all we got a couple of grants from the sports council a good chunk of which had to be spent on the cup which was cost about a thousand pounds much to the annoyance of the other the three of us Sue went off and bought it and went what? you've spent a thousand pounds she spent a thousand pounds in 1991 yes and it's and it's it's a very pretty cup but it's got it's got um sort of lacy cuts all around it you can't drink out drink out of it well without getting absolutely soaked so it's a very pretty it's in the it's in the museum as well so we were all like you can't spend a blow a thousand pounds well we haven't got any money anyway um but a chunk of the sports council money went to pay cover that and cover our printing costs and then we were left with about 35 000 pound debt at the end most of which was the russians because the russians didn't understand that if you're staying in a bed and breakfast situation they didn't understand that if the breakfast was there they only took their own breakfast and what they did was take everybody's breakfast so everyone who paid for their breakfast was pretty annoyed to find all the breakfast gone they ate a lot they well they didn't have any money right which Which is why they were selling stuff.

18:26And they couldn't afford the bus fare and they couldn't afford to wash their shirts. They didn't have any money because they weren't allowed to bring Nido out of Russia, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, yeah.

18:36Gabby:So£35 ,000 worth of debt. So, I mean, could you sum this tournament as a... It was a sporting success but came at personal cost for the four of you? Well, it did. Everyone let us sweat for six months, which was like, what are you going to do? What are the debts? They're all kind of wibbling about what we're to do. and finally a very lovely man called Dudley Wood who used to head up the RFU convinced the sponsorship company to make their fee go away and then there was about three or four grand of the accommodation for the Russians who also managed to break a sink or a toilet I can't remember which but how obviously the vodka was very good and he just wrote a cheque for the balance so Dudley Wood was our saviour but they did let her sweat for six months and you lost your job working because I was taking calls at my desk I was working in advertising agency from journalists and sending out using their fax machine to send out press releases and things they didn't take to and the boss was a West Ham supporter I think and he didn't like the fact that I would turn up for meetings with a black eye or a split eyebrow or bits missing and he hated all of that stuff and it can definitely contribute to me getting fun.

19:54Alice, when you look at what's happening right now in this country with this World Cup and already records have been broken in ticket sales, in attendance, the opening game attendance was bigger than any before, the most watched on television on Friday, that game between England and USA. Can you trace the DNA right back to 1991, do you think? I think we started something, we started the dominoes falling. Don't forget, during our World Cup, there were two conferences as well. One was about coaching and one was about the future of the worldwide sport because none of us had ever met. All the administrators, coaches and things, none of us had ever got together.

20:31So they had two conferences to discuss where is the worldwide sport going and the coaching strategies and all that sort of stuff. So all of that and what the final showed England, though England lost, by 1994 they worked out how to beat them. so there was a lot of huge amount of learning curves so it did start all sorts of balls rolling but what's very curious is that here we are 34 years later who remembers well we do we're yeah and you're making a documentary on it aren't you i am trying to yes it's a against a massive headwind um massive headwind it's certainly a documentary i would watch alice and thank you so much for coming in and sharing some incredible stories and keep enjoying this world Thank you for inviting me in.

21:18Gabby:The Sports Agents.