The rise of the Canberra Raiders women has helped spark an increase in junior rugby league participation numbers in the capital, but senior women' teams are struggling to field full sides.
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The Raiders will start their NRLW second season when they play the Wests Tigers next weekend and they're hoping they can build on the strong crowd support they built in their debut campaign.
The increasing presence of elite women's sport - across a variety of football codes - on television has led to girls flocking to league, union, soccer and Australian football.
The Belconnen Sharks, for example, have seen their participation rates double over the past 12 months.
The club added a Katrina Fanning Shield team - the senior women's competition - this year, but the same spark hasn't flowed through yet and at times they struggle to get a full team on the field.
The first female head coach of a Sharks team Amber Waters hopes the NRLW can bring further interest to both the senior and junior women's game.
"For a very long time, you see the men in NRL on the TV, earning lots of money and doing all of this stuff," said Waters.
"Seeing all these women on television. Seeing how tough they are, and how much people are getting around them, is giving the girls so much more confidence to play.
"It's just growing and growing, and the new players are getting younger and younger, so, we're getting there."
The Canberra senior women's competition previously operated under the Canberra Junior Rugby League banner. It is now under the Canberra Region Rugby League operations after the Katrina Fanning Shield was launched five years ago.
Sharks captain Catherine Carling said she was starting to see the impact of the NRLW on the senior women's competitions.
"In 2016, there were maybe only four teams in the competition it was a struggle to field teams, but after the NRLW, women are realising we can do men can women in the spotlight now," Carling said.
"We have nine teams in the senior comp and we are a new team this year. There's always been so many women interested in playing, and there's always been a competition there, there's just been no pathway to anything further." Tuggeranong captain Nirvana Ngan-Woo hoped NRLW recruiters would start picking players out of the Katrina Fanning Shield to make the leap to the top tier.
"For the women that are playing in the Katrina Fanning Shield, there isn't a clear pathway to the NRLW, unless you start in the juniors, and then you go up that way," Ngan-Woo said.
"One our girls had to move to Sydney to play in the [NSW first grade competition] to pursue an NRLW career.
"A lot of teams struggle to field 13 players on Saturdays, and that just contributes to the inconsistency where we could end up playing a nine on nine instead of a 13 on 13."
NRLW ROUND 1
Sunday: Wests Tigers v Canberra Raiders at Campbelltown, 1.45pm
