Home Turf, Global Stage: University of Northampton Journalism students gear up to cover Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025

With preparations in full swing and excitement building across Northamptonshire for the arrival of the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 at Franklin’s Gardens this weekend, a team of the county’s university students are ready and waiting pitch-side to get the feel of their first major sports event.

Nine students from the University of Northampton’s Multimedia Journalism and Multimedia Sports Journalism courses will be front and centre at all six international games taking place in the county throughout the next three weeks, taking the lead to deliver coverage across radio, television and social media.

Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 will represent a generational moment for global rugby that will set new standards, welcome new fans and families to the sport and inspire a new generation of players, providing an exciting catalyst to nationwide and global rugby growth.

With cinch stadium at Franklin’s Gardens the home of global heavyweight premiership team Northampton Saints, it’s an opportunity not to be missed for third-year Multimedia Sports Journalist Sophie Smith, who will be taking on the role of Broadcast Assistant.

Her role will involve juggling the management of broadcast crews, gathering players for post-match interviews, conducting venue walkthroughs, and ensuring the broadcasts run smoothly.

Student Sophie Smith reporting live as part of her Multimedia Sports Journalism degree.

With seven of the nine-strong University’s student team as women*, the generational impact of the Women’s Rugby World Cup is reaching far beyond the pitch and into traditionally male-dominated industries – like journalism.

The University of Northampton’s Multimedia Sports Journalism degree proudly boasts its percentage of female to male students which, for the latest academic year, stood at 40% female and 60% male – a hugely promising figure opposed to the current approximate 5% of female sports journalists in the UK industry.

“It’s exciting to have such a big international event coming to Northampton, especially as Northampton was the only town selected to host seven of the games – with the others hosts all cities” explains Sophie.

“It’s really important for women’s rugby to have this international platform as this will enable the women’s sport to grow, just like we’ve seen with women’s football in the past five years.

“As an athlete myself in the male dominated sport of snowboarding, it’s important to try and ensure that women get the same recognition and coverage as the men’s teams.

“Women’s rugby is currently very underrepresented, and this will hopefully change with our national team playing in an international tournament. It’s even more significant with the tournament being held in the UK and having national media broadcast the matches will really help to promote women’s rugby.”

Also joining Sophie to deliver gold-standard reporting will be second-year Multimedia Sports Journalism Student Ryan O’Sullivan, who is excited to see an international tournament land on his university’s hometown doorstep.

“This weekend marks the start of a really exciting few weeks here in Northampton. The town is massively well-known for its rugby, so to have an event like this in the local area is great for not only the town – to bring revenue and attention to our local community – but also for us students to get involved and show everyone what we can do.

“Through our course, we’ve had many great opportunities to report on sporting events, but a World Cup tournament in your university campus town does not come around very often. This will be the first time that I will be involved in an event this big, and I can’t wait for kick-off this weekend!”

This will be the latest in a long line of professional reporting delivered by students on the University of Northampton’s Multimedia Journalism course, following in the footsteps of their coverage on the US elections – both in 2020 and in 2024 – as well as their coverage of the last local elections in 2021, and of the UK General Elections of 2019 and 2024. It was for this which their reporting won a Silver Award in the 2024 Community Radio Awards.

Find out more about studying Multimedia Sports Journalism and Multimedia Journalism at the University of Northampton.

*The full list of student journalists are as follows:

Media Operations

• Ciara Steward
• Justine Larter
• Emily Robinson
• James Logan

Broadcast Assistant

• Ryan O’ Sullivan
• Sophie Smith
• Anna Fogden
• Jess Andrews Cordoba

Fan Services

• Erin Bonar