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Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh is hoping his new tsar of the women’s game, Tim Walsh, can repeat in 15-a-side rugby what he achieved with the Australian women’s sevens team: implement full-time professionalism and win Olympic gold just two years later.
Walsh, the long-time coach of the dominant Aussie women’s sevens team, was announced on Monday as the new director of women’s high performance, an expanded role in which he will oversee all of women’s rugby in Australia, including the Wallaroos and 15-a-side pathways.
Walsh was one of the masterminds of the highly successful Australian women’s sevens program, which in 2014 became the first fully professional women’s team in Australian sport, and then went on to win the inaugural Olympic gold medal in Rio in 2016.
In the decade since, the Aussie sevens team, with stars such as Charlotte Caslick and Maddison Levi, has continued to be one of the world’s most dominant outfits, and last month claimed yet another World Sevens Series crown.
The Wallaroos have not enjoyed the same level of success in the 15-a-side game, however, and after a disappointing 2025 World Cup, RA has sought to emulate the professional model used by strong women’s rugby nations, sharing more talent between sevens and 15s programs.
Along with plans to roll out full-time professionalism for the Wallaroos by the end of the year, it is hoped Walsh’s appointment will rapidly accelerate the growth of the team for the fast-approaching women’s World Cup in Australia in 2029.
The Wallaroos are ranked ninth in the world, and have not made it past the World Cup quarter-finals since their best finish in 2010 when they were third.
“We’ve got a high degree of confidence that Tim’s got the subject matter expertise, not just on the sevens side, but he has a deep history of playing and coaching 15s as well,” Waugh said of Walsh, who played No.10 for the Australian under-21s and the Queensland Reds.
“If you look at world-leading programs, there’s a lot of integration between sevens athletes and 15s athletes, and in the way that World Rugby’s designed the calendar it’s very much around players playing both formats. But we haven’t necessarily utilised our athletes across both programs as well as others.
“It’ll be a sprint [to the 2029 World Cup] and that’s why we’ve put Tim in to lead that program. We’re in a very strong position in our sevens program, and we’re excited about the acceleration of our 15s program, but time is running out, and we need to ensure we’re accelerating the growth.
“We saw that growth accelerated in 2014 through to 2016 in Rio when Tim took the team to a gold medal. It’s probably the same timeline really, as we bring an integrated women’s program together with full-time Wallaroos players to get that acceleration into 2029.”
Waugh said RA is aiming to have a squad of about 20 Wallaroos players on full-time contracts by the end of the year. They are currently semi-professional. Walsh will also help select a new Wallaroos coach.
Asked what a successful 2029 World Cup looks like for the Wallaroos, Walsh said: “Winning.”
“I think it’s possible,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that go into winning, and a lot of it comes down to that day. But it’s all the work done prior. This is a massive step forward to give us the best opportunity.”
Walsh plans to maximise the talent in Australian women’s rugby to benefit both formats, with major events also on the horizon for the Aussie sevens team: the 2028 Olympics in LA and the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. The highly fancied side crashed out in the past two Olympics, finishing fifth in 2020 and fourth in 2024.
“We’ve got two formats, but we will have one system and shared success,” Walsh said.
Walsh, who will also be on the RA executive committee, said the Wallaroos will improve “exponentially” when they go full-time.
“The more you train, the better you get,” he said. “With the science we have and the coaches we have, we have the ability to maximise talent and squeeze the best out of them.”
Walsh said the ability to sign one deal and play two formats in major events such as Olympics and World Cups, also on home soil, would not only be enough to fend off NRLW raids, but it will entice the pick of the rising cross-code talent to play rugby.
“The best of the best talent are going to be looking to play in those competitions,” he said.
Former Wallaroo and RA co-president Kristy Giteau said the appointment of Walsh and the move to full-time professionalism would be major boosts in achieving success at the World Cup.
Hosted by Australia, Giteau said the 2029 tournament had the capacity to be a game-changer for women’s rugby, in the same mould as the Matildas did for women’s football in 2023.
“The Matildas’ [success] saw a 16 per cent increase in their grassroots participation, and sold-out stadiums,” she said. “You can’t be what you can’t see, and visibility is going to be our best friend come ’29, because I envision packed stadiums, girls screaming and waiting after a game to get an autographed by one of our Wallaroos players.”
