Davis-Welsh has a killer step. She scored some wonderful tries off Phillips’ great lead up work against Young and Caitlin Moran’s North Newcastle team in their recent win in the Harvey Norman NSW Women’s rugby league grand final at Leichhardt Oval recently.

Vanessa Foliaki was sitting with the Phillips and Davis-Welsh and unlike the other two girls she’s played for the Jillaroos before.

When asked by Inside Sport what position she played she answered matter-of-factly “second row”.

Quiet by nature Foliaki is a pioneer and the first true state of origin women’s rugby league player.

She’s a hard running second rower who was a member of NSW’s first ever winning team last year after a losing sequence that covered 17 straight years.

She then moved to Queensland and plies her trade with Brisbane Easts, but she asked to play for NSW in this year’s Interstate series. Her request was granted and she won another women’s Interstate women’s rugby league title with NSW this year while living and playing in Queensland.

Annette Brander is another Jillaroos rising star who has played for the national women’s team since 2014.

Within a minute she had told me the names of all the younger players who was playing against the Cook Islands and who wasn’t when I came back to the Jilllaroos marquee a second time.

Pointing at the players who were at the Jillaroos marquee and who are mentioned above, “We’re all playing against the Cook Islands on Thursday except for Eli.

“She’ll play later in the tournament.”

As I talked to these present day Jillaroos before the men’s world cup match, It’s wonderful to see how far women’s rugby league has come in such a short space of time.

During 2007 representative players at state and international level were still paying out of their own pockets for the right to take advantage of that honour and to partake at that level.

Two thousand and seven NSW and Jillaroo representative Bronnie McIntosh, a dual international who also represented Australia in rugby union during the 1990s and early 2000s told Inside Sports she had to carry a bucket around at community events to raise cash as a member of the national squad as the Jillaroos weren’t aligned with the NRL, but played under the Australian Women’s Rugby League banner back then.

“We had to carry a bucket around to collect cash at some training camp in Queensland and I wasn’t impressed”, she told Inside Sport.

She withdrew from that squad not long after and that was the same team Steph Hancock and Renae Kunst spoke about being in camp with and not having enough food to eat, as they lost weight the longer that 2008 women’s rugby league World Cup went on. 

How times have changed as women’s sport moves into the public’s awareness and sporting mainstream, as they now receive press and television coverage on a regular basis and more importantly are now included under the NRL’s banner.

Now we watch the Matildas beat the world’s best and the Australian women’s cricket - including Elyse Perry’s record breaking 213-run double century in the women’s test match on television and on ABC radio.

Throw in the AFLW, the W-League, the Women’s Big Bash, the Jillaroos and the women’s Interstate Challenge and all are being covered more keenly by the media.

Players like Ruan Sims, Bec Young, Elianna Walton, Sam Bremner, Steph Hancock, Renae Kunst and Caitlin Moran are now household names among sports fans.

In the not too distant future women’s rugby league players including those above who are not retiring will go from part-time players to full-time professionals where they will share the big stage with their male counterparts on a full-time basis when the NRLW and their playing for NRL clubs become a reality.

When that happens every talented women’s rugby league player will have the world at their feet; as that same world becomes their oyster.

The Women’s Rugby League World Cup kicked off this Thursday at Cronulla’s Southern Cross Group Stadium and the final will be played as a double-header in conjunction with the men’s final at Brisbane Stadium, Brisbane on Saturday, 2 December 2017.