NRLW’s Scheduling Dilemma

The growth of both State of Origin and NRLW presents a good headache for the game’s HQ.

NRLW sides have just completed their second week of pre season training ahead of the 2025 season. For the majority of the athletes, they haven’t played a game of competitive rugby league since September - eight months ago.

When the two State of Origin squads were chosen for training camps back in April, the best of best players from Queensland and New South Wales made their way into high performance training environments to prepare for the current series. Around half of them had already played one game in 2025, albeit a fairly lopsided international match for the Jillaroos against England in Las Vegas.

However for the rest of the league’s players, a lack of any games - be it in state based senior competitions such as Queensland’s BMD Premiership, the NSW Harvey Norman Women’s Premiership or the NRLW, have meant other players have had no opportunities to show their improvement or press for selection.

Injured players and those who lost their representative jerseys from 2024 have not been able to prove a point to selectors by playing well at club level, emerging and fringe stars are without a platform to show they’re ready to take the next step, while State of Origin incumbents face a lack of competition for spots as those outside the squad cannot apply pressure for positions. Queensland, who have lost the opening two matches, would surely benefit from other players putting their hand up for selection by impressing in either a state league or NRLW matches.

It’s a scheduling issue which leading players including Kezie Apps and Ali Brigginshaw have been calling for changes to since last year. Apps has previously told HER WAY how the two NRLW seasons in 2022 (when the league was a six team competition) enabled a full pre season and NRLW season before Origin teams were selected for the standalone June clash. It meant teams were selected based on form, and the quality of the football in the State of Origin was top class as a result of players in peak condition. Emma Verran and Evania Pelite for example, were both new to the NRLW after crossing over from Rugby Sevens, and used the 2021 NRLW season (played early in 2022) to secure Origin debuts. Likewise, NSW halfback Rachael Pearson was named at halfback after impressing in her debut NRLW outing.

It’s not to say that the 2025 State of Origin series hasn’t been a good quality - New South Wales in particular have played some excellent rugby league, almost despite a lack of opportunities to play in the lead up. It says a lot for coach John Strange and his coaching team who have assembled such a dominant team in a few short weeks. However it’s also meant players have done much of their conditioning pre-training camps by themselves outside of high performance environments. As NSW vice captain Tiana Penitani Gray shared with HER WAY from Origin training camp,

“It’s not fun doing conditioning by yourself at home.”

The steady growth of teams in the NRLW - the 2025 season will feature 12 clubs, compared to six three years ago - means scheduling a full season plus finals is more of a challenge than it was in the initial four team seasons when games simply ran alongside NRL men’s finals. Add to that the explosion of popularity in women’s Origin to a three game series compared to just one fixture in 2022.

In all of this needs to be a determination to ensure NRLW and women’s State of Origin are played at times where it’s not simply lost amongst the higher profiled men’s matches, but also at times where fans are able to attend and watch in big numbers. As an example, over the past couple of seasons NRLW games have regularly been scheduled at 11:00am on Saturday mornings, a time when many girls and young women cannot attend as they are playing their own weekend sport. It’s a time slot where elite men’s sport would never be scheduled.

The first two women’s Origin games have seen significant media interest in the lead up, with the fixtures having ‘clear air’ to dominate the news cycle. With the men’s first Origin game next week being played 24 hours before the women’s decider, there has been a noticeable decline in coverage and promotion of the women. Indeed, at the final Sydney media conference for the NSW team, just one other media outlet was in attendance along with HER WAY, compared to four or five at the pressers leading into game two. The good news is that the games themselves have been ratings successes once again in 2025, with over two million TV viewers being reached for games one and two, and despite NSW having already claiming the series, the finale should rate well, as well as the chance to see a record crowd pack into the Newcastle stadium.

But back to the scheduling of games. While it appears there is no perfect solution that will suit broadcasters, players and fans alike, the athletes HER WAY has spoken to seem to be in agreement that there needs to be football played before State of Origin in order for all players to take their talents to another level. As Olympic gold medalist and 2021 Dally M medalist Emma Verran (née Tonegato, below) told HER WAY,

“I feel like potentially the good girls are getting better and the other girls are kind of missing out on all that training time.”