Rugby boss Castle reaches out to league

A number of sevens players, including some members of triumphant 2016 Olympic squad, came from touch football competitions organised by the NRL.

The traffic of talent has also gone in the other direction .

Tallisha Harden, Shontelle Stowers and Taleena Simon are playing in the new NRLW rugby league competition.

Simon bagged four tries last weekend.

Sevens gold medallist Chloe Dalton and Brooke Walker have joined the Carlton AFLW squad .

While Castle said she didn't fear losing more players to rival codes she has talked to her head of women's rugby Jilly Collins about approaching the NRL and working together

'When you''ve got challenged resources the last thing you need is a big arm wrestle being wasted over ego,'" Castle said on Tuesday.

"If we can actually get together and do camps all over Australia and find the best talent, whether we end up playing rugby or rugby league, sevens, 15s whatever it is, that would be a greater outcome for all of us.

"We're going to see if we can break some ground and have those conversations."

Castle admitted the one area of women's rugby RA wasn't delivering on was developing more female coaches.

None of the inaugural four Super W teams or the national sevens or Wallaroos sides have a female head coach.

'What we need is our female athletes being potentially coached by a woman," Castle said.

"Equally there's absolutely no reason why the day won't come when we can't see a female in the coaching ranks of the Wallabies and the Wallaroos and I think that's really important."

World Rugby's general manger of women's rugby Katie Sadleir said her organisation had released money from its reserves to put in place new international competitions for females.

"I know that New Zealand has been having conversations with Australia and they've been having conversations with other teams in the northern hemisphere to see what is possible and World Rugby is keen to support those initiatives," Sadleir said.

Australian Associated Press