Wallaroos’ Sharni Williams says if women played more Australia could be a top rugby nation

MORE games, more often and Australia can match it with the best. That’s the simple formula Wallaroos for stand-in captain Sharni Williams.

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 22: Sharni Williams of Australia is tackled by Alison Miller (L) and Ailis Egan during the Women's Rugby World Cup 2017 match between Ireland and Australia at the Kingspan Stadium on August 22, 2017 in Belfast, United Kingdom. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

MORE games, more often and Australia can match it with the best.

That’s the simple formula Wallaroos stand-in captain Sharni Williams believes the women’s team needs to move from playing off for fifth in the world — which they do early Sunday morning — to being regular semi-finalists.

The Wallaroos had played just five Tests between this World Cup and the last in 2014, and they were all in the past nine months.

Since that first one, in October last year, the Wallaroos have gone from a record 67-3 loss to New Zealand to knocking over Ireland 36-24 on Tuesday for a place in the fifth-place playoff at the World Cup.

The Wallaroos have improved throughout the World Cup and are in the fifth-place playoff. Pic: David Rogers/Getty Images

That’s no easy feat. Ireland are hosting the tournament and they play in the Six Nations each year. Ireland won the Six Nations in 2013 and 2015, that first title in a grand slam.

They pipped Australia 19-17 in their opening match of this World Cup, but the Wallaroos were convincing winners when they met again on Tuesday. A couple of late tries to the Irish made the scoreline more respectable, but the improvement in Australia after playing a couple more matches was evident.

Williams, who is captaining the side now Shannon Parry has returned home with a wrist injury, said having competitions in place that gave players regular matches at a high level would catapult Australia to be among the top nations in the world.

Williams leads Australia’s 15s side...

And the champion sevens side

“You look at the Six Nations, the European girls get to play quite a bit, so they’re playing the tournament and we sort of don’t play a lot of footy and our club footy as well, in Australia, is pretty poor at the moment,” Williams said.

“We’ve got some great teams playing but we’re not getting the game time that we need. We’ve got nationals as well where girls go and play that and it’s 20 minute halves so if we can make that a bit longer and get girls playing 80 minutes then I definitely think that we can push these other nations.”

Williams, a member of the gold medal-winning sevens team from the Rio Olympics, joined the Wallaroos squad hoping to impart some of her professional experience to teammates.

The centralisation of the rugby sevens program led to an Olympic gold medal and world title.

The sevens program became professional at the start of 2013 and Williams wanted to help some of the Wallaroos players to understand what athletes at an elite level do to be at the top of their game.

“We’ve put in a lot of hard work over here in Ireland. Some girls had never done any analysis before and we’re lucky to have an analyst here,” she said.

“That was my position coming in to 15s, I wanted to help the girls know what professional athletes were like and show them you have to look at yourself when you’re playing.

“A lot of girls didn’t like watching video footage of themselves ... That’s the way the games are going, it’s becoming really, really smart footy and it’s about sitting down and doing those extra one percenters and that homework and teaching the girls that this is part of the way forward.”