Bermuda will make rugby history later this month in their Caribbean Championship clash with Bahamas.

from Rugby118:

The match, which will take place at North Field on Saturday, April 30, will be the first full IRB international to be refereed by a woman, with Joyce Henry of Canada taking charge in the ground-breaking game.

Henry is one of the founder members of the IRB’s first Women’s Referee Panel, alongside Sarah Corrigan (Australia), Sherry Trumbull (Canada), Clare Daniels (England), Sylvie Bros (France), Gabriel Lee (Hong Kong), Nicky Inwood (New Zealand) and Dana Teagarden (USA) who were selected following a detailed review of performances at Women’s Rugby World Cup 2010.

The eight-strong panel are part of an IRB initiative to eventually create a structure so that the world’s top female referees will have regular opportunities to officiate international men’s and women’s matches.

The game is part of the North Zone 2nd round of fixtures in the annual NACRA Caribbean Championships. Bermuda received a bye to this round reflecting their 3rd place seeding in the region. They will play will subsequently play away against the winners of the Round one fixture, Cayman vs Mexico. Bahamas will complete the round’s fixture by playing at home against the same team.

Bermuda will be confident of progressing, having in recent years beaten both Cayman and the Bahamas away from home. However, Bahamas have some talented young players coming through and if they can get the ball quickly wide they have the pace in their backs to hurt Bermuda.

The winner of the group will go on to face the winners of the Southern Zone group in the final. Two members of this are known, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago, who both received byes to this round. The 3rd member of this group will be the winner of the BVI vs Barbado match, also being played this Saturday, 30th April.

Home advantage for the final is again decided on regional rankings, with the current rankings shown below.

Regional Rankings:
1 T&T
2 Guyana
3 Bermuda
4 Barbados
5 Bahamas
6 Mexico
7 Cayman
8 Jamaica
9 USA South
10 St Vincent and The Grenadines
11 BVI
12 St Lucia