Smaller Women's Rugby Ball Trial Splits Players — SkimNews
Get the Sports newsletter
Daily sports — scores, transfers, the storylines from the leagues you actually follow. Free.
- World Rugby is trialling a size 4.5 ball — about 3% smaller than the men's size five but the same weight — during September and October's WXV Global Series, with England facing Australia, Canada and New Zealand over the next three weeks.
- Helena Rowland, England's fly-half, said she has found a much bigger margin for error with the smaller ball and passes 'dying' to the floor earlier than expected, telling BBC Sport: 'I've just found it a bit harder to do my job.'
- England hooker May Campbell said the smaller ball can go 'a bit skew-whiff' in line-out throws and complained players had not been given the data behind the decision, saying 'this decision has kind of just happened that we're now trialling it at the top level.'
- Wales wing Lisa Neumann broke ranks with the criticism, saying the smaller ball 'changed the game' for her passing because of improved grip — a view World Rugby cites as evidence the trial suits women's physiology, mirroring basketball's smaller ball and lower women's sprint hurdles.
- Rowland also flagged shape inconsistency between match balls and training balls as a 'massive' extra problem not seen with the size five, with balls arriving 'fat' one week and visibly smaller the next.
- World Rugby told BBC Sport it will not share comparable data until 'early 2027' after collecting player, coach and match-official surveys, and declined to provide any data when asked, fueling player frustration at being 'guinea pigs on the global stage.'
- Players will return to club rugby playing with a size five ball after the international window, meaning any retraining on the size 4.5 ends at the international boundary.
Why it matters: Hookers, scrum-halves and fly-halves are being asked to retrain 13-plus years of muscle memory on the size five ball within a four-to-five-week window, while World Rugby won't publish comparable data until early 2027 — leaving the women's international game in limbo with no resolution date beyond the WXV tournaments.
Ask SkimNews
