How ‘brutal’ PWR sprint could impact Women's Six Nations

If domestic seasons are supposed to be marathons, then the 2024/25 Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR) campaign has been an unrelenting sprint for all involved.

A competition that was played across at least seven months in each of the previous four seasons was crammed into five this time around in an attempt to aid England’s bid to win their home Rugby World Cup.

Some teams used the condensed format to their advantage. Four victories in 21 days in October and November provided the catalyst for a 10-match winning run that catapulted Harlequins into the play-offs.

‘This Energy Never Stops’ – Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025

‘This Energy Never Stops’ – Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025

But for others, the whirlwind pace of the season proved less positive. Exeter Chiefs won their opening eight matches but only two of their final seven – played across seven consecutive weekends – to slip out of the top four.

The tailspin ultimately cost head coach Susie Appleby her job.

Gloucester-Hartpury, back-to-back defending champions, and Saracens are the two teams who remain in the kick for home on the final straight at StoneX Stadium on March 16.

Speaking ahead of their semi-final victory against Bristol Bears last weekend, Gloucester-Hartpury co-captain Natasha Hunt admitted the shortened season had been “brutal”.

Hunt paid tribute to the sacrifices made by her club-mates for whom rugby is not their full-time job and have had to juggle a compact playing schedule with work.

One of Hunt’s teammates finished a night shift at 9am on the Friday they played their final regular season match against Quins. Another had worked in A&E at a local hospital all day.

“My full credit, and my heart just goes out to the girls that have managed to juggle full-time work with what we’ve managed to achieve this season and still perform the way they did,” the England scrum-half said.

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Bears head coach Dave Ward made a similar point in the build-up to the semi-final at Queensholm while Quins number eight Jade Konkel-Roberts suggested her club’s strength and conditioning department had played a vital role in their campaign.

“It’s actually been a great season,” the Scotland international said. “The fact that there hasn’t been quite a lot of rest weeks, I think has allowed us to stay in that rugby zone.

“Yes, it’s been quite tough on the body, especially after a lot of physical games, but we knew that this season was going to be like that, and we knew that injuries were going to happen because it was so condensed as well.

“And it was just how can we control what we can control? And that’s just being best prepared and that’s again, all the work behind the scenes with our support staff around loading, recovery, just making sure everything we do is right.”

You can be sure that player loading is also at the forefront of the work being done by the England and Wales coaching staff as they each plan for the opening weeks of the Guinness Women’s Six Nations.

Both nations will have a large contingent playing – and coaching in Wales’ case – in the PWR final on March 16, who will then have fewer than seven days to prepare for the start of the championship the following weekend.

As far back as August, Red Roses boss John Mitchell suggested he would “probably have to prepare two teams for the early start of Six Nations because the finalists will be playing just before we kick off”.

But not even England can realistically rest all their players who will compete in the domestic game’s biggest match.

Of the 42 players that Mitchell included in his latest training squad on Monday, 18 are registered to either Gloucester-Hartpury or Saracens.

Crucially, eight of those started England’s most recent match – the WXV 1 title-clinching victory against Canada in Vancouver in October – while a further two were named as replacements.

It is likely Mitchell and his coaches will be guided on selection by fitness, and playing load, however it seems inconceivable that they could line up in York without all of Hunt, captain Zoe Aldcroft, Marlie Packer, Alex Matthews, Maud Muir and Tatyana Heard.

Some or all of those will be given rest during the opening weeks of the championship, but you can bet planning is underway to ensure it is not provided at the same time.

England and Mitchell have the luxury of a deep squad. The likes of Morwenna Talling, Sadia Kabeya, Maddie Feaunati and Lucy Packer are ready to step in, and testing new combinations in a World Cup year is no bad thing.

But the same cannot necessarily be said for incoming Wales boss Sean Lynn, himself facing an unenviable six-day turnaround between his last match in charge of the Circus and his first taste of Test rugby.

Lynn has been getting to know his new players while the PWR season rumbles on and named his first training squad on Monday, but he will understandably be preoccupied with thoughts of a PWR three-peat between now and March 16.

Four members of that training squad started Gloucester-Hartpury’s semi-final victory against Bristol, while Meg Davies was on the bench and Georgia Evans helped Saracens beat Quins the previous day.

The quartet of Circus starters includes captain Hannah Jones, back-row Bethan Lewis and the team’s playmaker Lleucu George while the fourth, Kate Williams, would expect to push Alex Callender for selection at openside flanker.

Wales’ Gloucester-Hartpury and Saracens contingent will not join up with the squad until after the PWR final and the size of the juggling act facing Lynn was perhaps demonstrated by the size of the group he named on Monday, which included 48 names.

He is unlikely to admit it, but with his Welsh hat on, the new coach may have been pleased that it was Saracens who came through the other semi-final. It means Quins teammates Kayleigh Powell, Abbie Fleming, Carys Phillips and Lisa Neumann can focus on the Six Nations.

Wales’ opponents in their first match under Lynn will be Scotland, whose sole representative in either of the winning semi-finalists’ line-ups was Louise McMillan (Saracens), who was overlooked for a place in Bryan Easson’s pre-tournament training squad.

Ireland, another team chasing a top-three finish in the Six Nations, should be represented by Gloucester-Hartpury’s Neve Jones in the final.

The Celtic Challenge, meanwhile, draws to a close this weekend giving the Irish, Scottish and Welsh players involved two full weeks to prepare for the championship.

We won’t know until September 27 whether the decision to condense the PWR season achieves its stated aim. But, unfortunately for Wales, it could have a more immediate impact.