Unveiling former Wallabies flanker and Western Force cult hero Matt Hodgson as their new head coach and signing several international stars including Wallaroos second row Michaela Leonard and Fiji wing Rachel Laqeretabua, the Western Force are ready to take charge on the field after leading off it for the last two seasons.
Introducing match payments in 2022, which saw players earn $1.5k through the seven-week season with win and loss bonuses and a Wallaroos selection bonus, the Force, alongside the Rebels, became the first club to officially pay their players. Doubling down on their efforts, the club launched the first semi-professional Super W academy earlier this month, while they were also the first to introduce a high-performance manager, alongside strength and conditioning coaches and a dedicated physio.
"We always think about ourselves, we're always thinking of what's best for us as the Western Force," Hodgson told ESPN. "For us to be the first of many things and putting a high-performance manager in the female space, growing the game, if we do it well then people will have to step up and follow or the players that are rising in the female ranks will want to come to a program that delivers in results, both individually and as a team, and if we can do that, it's only going to help us grow internally.
"As you can see, a lot of international and people of quality want to come join our program and it's not always about the payment for the individual it's actually putting a program together where they actually improve as athletes and are actually classed as athletes so that's important for us. It's pretty exciting to put a pathway and a program together that girls can actually aspire to."
Leading the way in the women's game, the former Force captain acknowledged the franchise had taken several learnings from their experiences of starting the men's program in 2005 before their axing from Super Rugby in 2017 and eventual reinstatement in 2020.
"We did a survey last year, there was a number of requests that they put in and payments was not at the top of it, which is quite exciting that they want to get the program right,' Hodgson explained.
"It's probably the one thing we got wrong with the men's game when it first went professional, we put all the money into the players, not into the program and the coaches and the ID and the pathway systems, so we have to learn from those mistakes and get it right for the women's game.
"I think we're doing that right from an operational point-of-view at the Western Force and seeing the girls improve by having access to S&Cs and being treated the same as the men within the organisation, so it's great for me driving it from a coaching point of view. But the whole organisation's got on board, from our commercial team to our operational team, to even our men's high performance team as well, they're more than willing to help and grow the game."
With just three wins in five seasons -- including winless 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons -- Force management have worked hard to create a strong program that will attract the best players from not just Australia but around the world.
And that it is already paying off as, alongside signing Leonard -- a former Brumbies lock who's currently plying her trade for Exeter Chiefs in Premier 15s -- and former Saracen Laqeretabua, the Force also brought in Japan internationals Yuna Sato at lock and Natsuki Kashiwai in the front row, while Super Rugby Aupiki star Atlanta Lolehea will join the side following the Matatu season.
With 29 caps worth of international experience -- 24 in the forward pack alone -- the new look squad has a much different feel in 2023 than it has ever had previously.
"It's exciting to bring someone [Michaela Leanord] of that experience in from a leadership point-of-view," Hodgson said. "I think we've got great leaders in our backs with Trilleen [Pomare] and Ariana [Hira-Hirangi] that have played at a high level before but our forward pack is young and raw so it'll be exciting to bring her into the group and actually have a forward pack that's tough and I know that she's going to give it 100% and the girls are going to fall in behind her.
"[Sato and Kashiwai bring] energy, definitely energy. They've come from professional backgrounds as well, so they train full time in Japan and we're forming a great relationship with that club over there. But they bring a lot of energy and again, knowledge from a different culture, so we've got a lot of different cultures in our team so bringing another aspect of that and the way the girls are connected together is pretty exciting. But yeah, definitely a lot of energy at training and commitment, they love going out there and just playing."
Hodgson had previously never envisioned he'd be taking on a women's coaching role, but after working with the Force's sevens program last year and overseeing the women's program as the general manager for the club the former flanker took the plunge with aspirations of taking the women's game to another level.
"It's exciting," Hodgson told ESPN. "I was sort of overseeing it a fair bit last year and then went down to the front end this season and just looked at where the girls were wanting to go and then the commitment required from the club to invest into the girls' performance wise.
"I thought it was the right time for us to invest in the coaching department, put a coaching team together that is going to bring improvement and success for the group that are demanding results.
"I definitely didn't have it on the horizon, but as you captain teams and get involved in organisations for long enough you end up helping out in all different aspects. I was doing the sevens and I got a fair bit of commitment from them and saw how much they improved over a 12-week campaign and thought about it as our organisation; how can we take the group from willingness last year to being competitive and look for success this year?
"As we put the team together from a playing point-of-view they deserve to have a coaching group that matches their ability as well and their demands from an organisation, so we put in S&Cs, physio and performance managers. We want to grow the female game in WA, and I think we're doing a lot to show what we're actually doing."
Hodgson has been learning his new role on the fly as he begins to understand the difference between coaching men's and women's programs and looks to develop the fundamental skills and rugby knowledge that had been lacking previously.
"It's probably just coaching differently full stop," Hodgson told ESPN. "I learned pretty quickly that you just can't tell them what to do, you've got to tell them why and explain to them the scenarios and why they're doing something, and once they get the concept of why they're doing it, they pick it up quite easily.
"I can tell a male forward to run through a brick wall and they'll run through a brick wall, with a female she'll still run through a brick wall but I'm telling her why she needs to run through a brick wall, so it's just a different mentality of how you coach.
"One thing we started early on when we first started preseason was general fitness and that's rugby fitness, so to improve in an 80-minute game not just run for the sake of running, but actually why they're doing certain things.
"Catch-pass was a work on and I think Australian rugby, both male and female, don't spend a lot of time on the skill asset and that's from a junior age group, so we spent a lot of time on catch-pass and then what I really enjoy is sitting down and talking through a game of rugby and scenarios with them and asking questions: Why are you doing this? Have you looked at these options? And just teach them about rugby the game itself.
"There's a lot of them coming to rugby late and actually don't have years of rugby knowledge, so just teaching them about the game and they're like sponges, there's nothing better than sitting down with a whole kitchen, having a meal, watching a game, and talking through the scenarios and then implementing them in their game and at training. It's pretty exciting to see how quickly they've grown and how much they're demanding from me and I'm up for the challenge.
"Then my whole focus is how do I bring all the girls together to represent the Western Force and it's something that they've bought into. We saw that when we played our first trial against Melbourne, the whole team sat around and watched the men's game as a group, then we went on to the field as part of the Western Force, giving out signatures and to see young girls and young kids come up to the girls and ask for their signatures and seeing the smile and the shock on the girls' faces it's pretty exciting to see that new normal now."
With the clock ticking till season kick-off against the Waratahs in Sydney on Friday night, Hodgson is unwilling to put a number to what would be considered a pass mark for their season. Instead, he wants the season to be viewed more holistically through both off-field and on-field success.
"Off the field we're kicking goals already at the moment that probably I have to recalibrate each week because the girls are actually going so well. The first thing was to bring a program that we seek success and I think we're putting that together now and it's a program that's not going to just last during the Super Rugby campaign, it's going to be for the whole year and create a pathway for more girls to come.
"We want to play an exciting brand of football and not only have team success but also have individual success and success can be valued at different levels for each individual. For some girls that have crossed codes from AFL for them to learn to catch, pass, run, kick and understand what the game is, is a success and then for girls to go to higher honours, I think we've got a number of girls that are scratching that surface to play for their country."