Cassidy Morley to represent ADF at the 2021 Women’s Rugby League National Championships

The 2021 Harvey Norman Women’s Rugby League National Championships will get underway tomorrow at Redcliffe where former Boggabri Kangaroos gun Cassidy Morley will represent the Australian Defence Force in the opens division.

19-year-old Morley graduated Narrabri High School in 2019 before leaving her hometown in February last year when she set off for a career in the army.

She has been based in Brisbane since October following training stints in Wagga Wagga and Puckapunyal, a town 10km west of Seymour, in central Victoria.

While living in Narrabri, Morley played for the Wee Waa Panthers ladies’ league tag team in the 2017 Group 4 Rugby League competition before switching to Boggabri for seasons 2018 and 2019.

She was named the Boggabri league tag side’s best attacker in 2019 after she took out the players’ player and player of the year awards as a 16-year-old in 2018.

Having earlier played rugby league in Narrabri as a junior, she then made her senior tackle competition debut in October 2019 for Boggabri in the Tamworth-based Group 4 Rugby League women’s nines tackle competition.

Morley was unable to play any rugby league in 2020 while in training for the army but made her return to the sport for the West Brisbane Panthers’ under-19s team earlier this year.

Most recently, she was selected as a member of the ADF squad following several selection camps run by ADF Women’s Rugby League coach, Sergeant Cory Lahz.

Morley said that she could not wait to run out to play at the National Championships event.

“I’m pretty keen,” she told The Courier.

“Julia Robinson (who plays for Brisbane Broncos in the NRLW competition) played at it, that’s where she made her rugby league debut.

“She’s in my troop in the army so I work with her. She said there’ll be a lot of scouts there for NRLW. Playing in that is a goal of mine for sure.

“In the NRL I support the Bulldogs but the Brissy girls playing for the Broncos is what I look up to.”

Morley has been selected as the ADF’s starting halfback for a tournament which is being touted as a pathway to the 2021 NRLW competition.

NRL.com recently reported that Jillaroos coach Brad Donald had predicted between 80-100 players who take part in the tournament could be lining up for NRLW clubs this season

“A number of players who play at these championships are going to find themselves getting a tap on the shoulder to play for an NRLW club this year which is really exciting,” Donald told NRL.com.

“They could do exactly what a Julia Robinson has done in the past and find themselves running around in the NRLW in a couple of months’ time after having a good performance at these championships.

“Adding to that, it’s a key event as part of building the women’s pathway.

“Every one of these girls who will play has had some physical testing done so we can really gather some data from here on the next group who makes their way to the NRLW.

“That’s going to help us make future decisions around the game, the intensity, the rules and more expansion.”

Robinson, who competed at the event during the ADF’s debut campaign in 2018, is currently part of the side’s coaching staff.

Morley and her teammates will take on Victoria and Western Australia in back-to-back games tomorrow.

They will then go head-to-head with First Nation Gems during day two on Friday before playing back-to-back matches against Northern Territory and South Australia on day three on Saturday.

All of those games will be played across 20-minute timeslots ahead of Sunday’s finals matches which will all be 40 minutes in length.

The fifth and sixth-ranked teams will meet first on Sunday morning ahead of a third-placed playoff between the third and fourth-ranked sides. The two top-ranked teams will play for the championship at midday.

All Harvey Norman National Championships matches across the four days will be live-streamed on NRL.com.