More women and girls are playing rugby in Wales than ever before as the national game shakes off its exclusively male image and gets a well-overdue shot of girl power. The success of the Wales national men and women’s teams has inspired girls and women in increasing numbers to pick up the oval ball.

Wales reflects a worldwide boom in women playing the game. Performance hubs have reported being inundated at trials and there are now five divisions compared with two a decade ago, while new women’s clubs have been springing up all over Wales. Recent WRU #TryOurGame taster sessions attracted scores of women, aged from teenagers to those in their 40s, who had never played rugby before.

But Welsh women’s rugby goes right back to the First World War. The women’s game grew out of the camaraderie of the munitions’ factories, producing rugby players like Maria Eley, the Cardiff Ladies full-back. She was nominated to be the first woman to enter the World Rugby Hall of Fame.

However, Welsh women’s first foray into the sport was brief. Just as the women who took over men’s jobs during the war were pushed back into the home or domestic service, so their sporting aspirations were crushed. Welsh women’s football was even more popular during World War One. Most factories had a woman’s team. Some, like the Swansea National Shell Factory, were very successful, finishing up unbeaten champions between 1917 and 1919.

It took another 70 years for a Welsh women’s rugby team to exist as an international side, when icon of the female game Liza ‘Bird’ Burgess led Wales against England at Pontypool Park in 1987. And momentously, twenty-six years ago, the inaugural Women’s Rugby World Cup kicked off.