Stronger Together: The Helsby Sirens Story
In 2024, five Cheshire-based girls' rugby teams joined forces to create the Helsby Sirens. Two seasons on, more than 50 girls are part of a growing pathway built around keeping girls in the game.
In grassroots girls' rugby, sometimes the biggest challenge isn't finding girls who want to play.
It's having enough of them in the same age group to keep a team going.
In 2024, five Cheshire-based clubs — Ellesmere Port, Caldy, Birkenhead Park, Winnington Park and Helsby — joined forces to create the Helsby Sirens.
As Nicola Nevitt, a parent of one of the Helsby Sirens' U16 players tells us, the clubs had a shared problem. Each had girls who wanted to play, but some age groups didn't have enough players to field a team on their own.
They didn't want that to mean the girls had to stop playing.
So they came together.
The Sirens initially brought the girls together for training, giving them the opportunity to develop as a group and experience full-contact rugby sessions.
Over the last two seasons, that decision has allowed the programme to grow. The Sirens have been able to field full U14 and U16 teams, and the girls are now moving strongly into their third season together.
For Nicola, the story is about more than simply getting enough players onto a pitch.
It's about creating somewhere for girls to belong and somewhere for them to keep progressing.
“They didn’t want that to mean the girls had to stop playing.”
Now the next stage of that pathway is taking shape.
The girls have decided to register at Helsby, while maintaining strong links with their founding clubs. That means those clubs can continue bringing new girls into the game, while the older girls have a pathway to follow as they move through the age groups.
There are now more than 50 girls registered at Helsby, across the U14, U16 and U18 squads.
And the idea is beginning to spread.
More clubs in the area are looking at how they can build similar pathways for their own girls as they progress through the age groups.
It is the kind of development that can be easy to overlook when we talk about the growth of women's and girls' rugby.
There is no big stadium here.
No headline signing.
Just clubs deciding that, together, they could give their girls more opportunities than they could manage alone.
And the girls themselves seem to have embraced that opportunity.
Nicola describes Helsby Sirens as a club full of passionate girls who have formed strong bonds both on and off the field. They fight for each other, encourage one another and work hard to be the best they can be.
That sense of togetherness is becoming part of the identity of the group.
And there are already some impressive results to show for it.
One of the biggest successes on the field came when 15 of the Sirens' U16 players attended assessment days for the Cheshire PDG — and all 15 were successful in gaining a place in the group.
For some of those girls, Nicola tells us, they had only been playing rugby for one or two years. Their success in gaining a place in the group is a remarkable achievement.
There are other signs of that progress too. Two of the Sirens' under-18 players have been selected for the North West Colleges Sale Sharks programme, giving them another opportunity to develop their rugby beyond the club.
But perhaps the most important part of the story sits underneath those achievements.
These are girls who have been given the opportunity to stay in the game, develop together and see where rugby might take them.
The Sirens now play in the Northern Girls Network on Sunday afternoons and train on Thursday evenings at Helsby Community Sports Club.
Their social media presence is also beginning to attract more engagement, and the girls recently attended Chester Pride to promote their inclusive team environment.
The pathway is growing.
“It has given the girls somewhere to go.”
But so is the sense of what that pathway can mean.
Because grassroots rugby doesn't always grow in a straight line.
Sometimes it grows because people recognise a problem and decide to approach it differently.
Not how do we make our club work on its own?
But what could we give the girls if we worked together?
That was the decision made by those five Cheshire clubs in 2024.
Two seasons later, it has helped create full teams, new opportunities and a pathway for more than 50 girls.
For the Helsby Sirens, working together has done more than solve a numbers problem.
It has given the girls somewhere to go.
And, perhaps most importantly, somewhere to keep going.
WITH THANKS TO
Nicola Nevitt
Helsby Sirens
Thank you for sharing your story with XV Style.
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