little financial or cultural incentive to play. Despite this, a women's rugby league match in Sydney in 1921 attracted around 30,000 spectators. Females account for a large percentage of rugby league's viewing public and the attraction of the game for women partly accounts for rugby league's very strong position in the Australian sporting landscape. Many NRL clubs hold initiatives to foster this relationship. For instance, in 2005 the Canterbury Bulldogs staged a luncheon for 300 of Sydney's corporate women to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, as well as skills development for school girls within the Canterbury-Bankstown district. This follows the increased number of female members to the boards of the National Rugby League and several of its clubs. Manly Sea Eagles also instituted several female directed initiatives, some of which were aimed towards further increasing female spectator numbers. Not all the perceptions of rugby league being a mostly man game are completely true. At a junior and local level there are many women involved in volunteering positions. Women form a very important part of the local club structures. However, it is not customary for women over the age of 11 to continue playing rugby league against the boys and the exclusively women's rugby league clubs have a relatively small profile in comparison to the local boys' clubs. Rugby league became the first mainstream professional sport in Australia to appoint a female director to a governing body, with Katie Page, the managing director of retail giant Harvey Norman, accepting an invitation to join the National Rugby League's executive board. In 2009 the Australian National Women's rugby league side (Jillaroos) defeated the 2008 Women's Rugby League World Champions New Zealand, in Auckland, ending a ten-year streak of successive defeats at the hands of the New Zealand team. Age Junior participation An analysis of 2001 New South Wales Child Health Survey by the University of New South Wales has shown that 23.2% of parents are likely to discourage their son from playing rugby league. In contrast, the next most discouraged sport was rugby union, with only 7.5% of parents willing to discourage the sport. This is despite recent research by Medibank annually since 2003 that puts other sports in Australia, such as Australian Rules Football and soccer as producing more major injuries. The injury rates and the public perception of rugby league as a dangerous sport are most likely the