Jillaroos’ Jess Skinner blasts NRLW for lack of female head coaches compared to AFLW

The discomfort comes mostly from the fact it’s 2025 and the opportunities for female coaches in rugby league should be growing faster than its current rate.

Part of her frustration is built up over working for so long at the coal face trying to change outdated attitudes ingrained in the sport.

As head coach of the Jillaroos since February, and recently extended through to the end of the Women’s Rugby League World Cup in 2026, Skinner is now the only woman to be appointed a head coaching job in recent years, and just the second current female head coach in the game alongside Gold Coast mentor Karyn Murphy.

She became the first female Indigenous All Stars head coach earlier this year, and is now the first Indigenous woman in charge of the Jillaroos.

She’s the first woman since Karen Stuart in 2008 and 2009 to coach the Jillaroos, and just the second since the team was formed in 1995.

Given the history, Skinner takes the visibility of her jobs extremely personally.

“People putting the word “first” on that doesn’t feel comfortable for me,” she says ahead of Sunday’s Pacific Championships final against New Zealand at CommBank Stadium.

“But actually my success will be that there are female coaches coming to take my role, and that’s a privilege for me.

“I want to do a good job so the game can change, so there is that pressure on me to show the game we’re ready for it.”

COMPARISON TO AFLW

Skinner has been around the game for a long time, working as an assistant coach at the Knights, and in development roles with the NRL with the combined affiliate states boys and girls teams and Indigenous and Pasifika pathways and the Rise Rookie program.

Her year is spent at academy training days, talent identification and putting players into the right systems, as well as developing best practice coaching and staff development.

Hugely popular with the playing group and forward thinking, Skinner has earned her place at the top but it comes after a few difficult years for female coaches in rugby league.

In the past few seasons alone, women’s State of Origin coaches Tahnee Norris and Kylie Hilder were both replaced by male counterparts, while there’s been six NRLW head coach changes with all the jobs going to men.

The last woman appointed to a top job was Murphy back in 2022, and Skinner is the first since.

The experience and merit of the male coaches is not in question, but it does seem strange for a women’s sport not to have at least one female applicant deemed capable for an available job recently.

By contrast, with six more teams, the AFLW has five female head coaches.

Included among them is Daisy Pearce with West Coast, who finished up a stellar career with a Melbourne premiership in 2022 before quickly transitioning into a top coaching gig.

HOW TO CHANGE IT

It’s a rugby league problem, and there’s an attitude that needs changing.

“It’s probably forward thinking from clubs, actually getting them to believe that women can coach, because they can,” Skinner says when asked about the biggest obstacles.

“Not automatically thinking a man has to fill a coaching role.

“There are female coaches out there that can do the job, but having that forward thinking and the open mind to it.

“We’ve had a lot of changes in head coaches in these last 12 months and all the jobs went to males, so I reckon it’s more around clubs being open to (hiring a woman) than anything.”

Across the past eight years there’s been 23 coaches at NRLW level, just two have been women, including Luisa Avaiki, who was the Warriors’ inaugural coach in 2018.

She says clubs not only have a responsibility to push the game forward, but to challenge the way they do things and encourage development.

“Another one is giving opportunities for women to lead in those spaces, so if there are women in the pathways or in the system, giving them responsibilities as a head coach, whether that’s at Harvey Norman or Tarsha Gale level, giving them those roles so they can keep developing,” she says.

“Giving a female a head coaching job is not a risk, so it’s not that.

“But rugby league is like that, relationship building and those stakeholder relationships are pretty massive and I understand clubs have their own ideas and values around what they want their program to look like.

“But that’s the growth mindset we want to change. It’s not a risk to take on a female head coach, it’s actually what’s going to make their program better.”

CLUB SUPPORT

Some clubs are catching up.

Under head coach John Strange, Sydney Roosters star Keeley Davis is already on the path to a coaching career, as are teammates Jayme Fressard, Corban Baxter and Jocelyn Kelleher who all have roles with the junior reps teams.

Former Jillaroo Meg Ward has been an assistant with the Queensland team for the past few years and coached the Tonga team for the Pacific Championships, while former Maroons coach Tahnee Norris is with the PNG Orchids.

At the grassroots level the interest is growing too, and change could be on the horizon if clubs make it happen.

“This year in particular we had two female head coaches, two female assistant coaches and female strength and conditioning coach, so predominantly women,” Skinner said.

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“Developing physios, we’re seeing a lot of that coming through.

“There’s a really clear pathway, they can progress to the ASSRL national team or the PMs team, which is exciting for the green and gold to have all those women coming through.

“I wish we could do so much more but the numbers are good and the female coaching numbers get stronger every year.”

Originally published as Jillaroos’ Jess Skinner blasts NRLW for lack of female head coaches compared to AFLW