By Eilidh MacGlone, Web Archivist, National Library of Scotland

UK Web Archive Promotional Postcard on the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025

Muddy Thistles? Or Dropkick Thistles? I may not have a future in marketing…

I was listening in to a podcast clip about Team Scotland’s nickname to find out more about the upcoming event. Do the Thistles need a qualifier for their nickname? Not a question resolved by the Fed by Farmers podcast but it was a reminder that it’s not easy to guess what other people will find important or memorable.

The Cup will be a brief few weeks where crowds will gather to appreciate women’s rugby at its pinnacle, to see it played with the greatest skill. Players and their teams have trained, overcome injury and fundraised - now all that remains is playing the game. Our collection will capture only a small part, what people have written on the open web, but it helps to build the documentary history of Scotland.

Ian Scott, our curator of Sport, Leisure and Newspapers will be selecting items for this collection. I will be working to bring in copies of this material in good order and make them findable for future research.

History is made on the pitch, but sports writing by journalists observes the action for those of us who can’t be there. Players write for each other and the public in their social media, and one day, we can hope, write their own history. Fan sites and organisations web publications form one more part of the whole picture of how these weeks will be remembered.

Legal deposit for the web allows us to work to prepare for our future readers. But, the web, even when looking just at that part published from Scotland, is big. We can't be certain we will find every last thing written online that would be most appreciated in future… so, I would like to ask the reader a question.

Have you read something about the Rugby Women’s World Cup 2025 that said something important to you about it… that you won't forget?

If you can, please consider nominating your choices for archiving: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0riHLT76GPOlNxyZJ2uI_YTIlXb9V2vrLBE2fxxdB0Zfuvg/viewform

By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives

Screenshot of Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 Website

England are the hosts for the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025. The group stages will take place in Brighton & Hove, Exeter, Bristol, Northampton, Manchester, York and Sunderland with the final taking place at Twickenham in London. England has hosted the tournament before but this is the first time that the tournament will be at Twickenham, the home of English rugby. 

The UK Web Archive is collaborating with other GLAM sector organisations, the official tournament partners from England 2025 (Local Organising Committee) and UK Sport to preserve the digital legacy of the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025.

Over the next few weeks there will be blog posts from the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) that will give an overview of what content they are selecting for the collection.

Due to the cyber-attack on the British Library in October 2023 the archive is not accessible at the moment but we are still actively archiving and preserving websites.

Fill in this nomination form with your favourite UK web content related to the tournament here: https://forms.gle/tRKJvFsajM1XCXq37 

To find out more about what type of content you can nominate, read the blog post What to nominate for Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025.

By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives

England are the hosts for the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025. The group stages will take place in Brighton & Hove, Exeter, Bristol, Northampton, Manchester, York and Sunderland with the final taking place at Twickenham in London. England has hosted the tournament before but this is the first time that the tournament will be at Twickenham, the home of English rugby. 

This is also the first time that the UK Web Archive has a dedicated collection for the Women's Rugby World Cup. There are many websites related to women's rugby across Britain and Northern Ireland in the Sports:Football > Rugby > Rugby Union collection. Due to the cyber-attack on the British Library in October 2023 the collection is not accessible at the moment but we are still actively archiving and preserving websites.

Over the next few weeks we will be archiving as much as we can about the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 but we need your help.

Fill in this nomination form with your favourite UK web content related to the tournament here: https://forms.gle/tRKJvFsajM1XCXq37 

What content should I nominate?

Information about what the UK Web Archive does and does not archive

You can nominate any UK published content related to the tournament whether it is a full website, a subsection of a website, individual pages or social media. This content will generally sit within one or sometimes two of the six subsections in this collection. 

Collection subsections:

Cultural Events: Any websites and social media accounts related to the cultural events during the tournament. This includes arts, heritage and learning events.

Fans: Websites, blogs and social media accounts written by fans of the sport.

Organisational Bodies/Venues: UK Sport, World Rugby, match stadiums and local government websites.

Press Media & Comment: News and comment, including the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 on BBC and other media websites etc..

Sponsors: UK Websites and news articles relating to some of the official sponsors of the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025.

Teams: Websites and social media accounts of players' based in the UK. This will mostly be made up of players from Britain and Northern Ireland but also a few players from the other countries that qualified for the competition and live in the UK.

Examples:

• Full website: https://www.rugbyworldcup.com/2025/ 
• Subsection of a website: https://www.therugbypaper.co.uk/all/world/womens-international/womens-rugby-world-cup/ 
• Individual page from a website: https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/business/businesses-encouraged-to-get-involved-ahead-of-the-womens-rugby-world-cup-2025-5192655 
• Event/campaign page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/inspiring-women-talk-trish-brown-tickets-1306835663649 

For social media accounts we can only archive a selection of these using Browsertrix. This is a manual process that yields mixed results. We only archive social media accounts of public figures and not groups that require a login. 

Fill in this nomination form with your favourite UK web content related to the tournament here: https://forms.gle/tRKJvFsajM1XCXq37