Record TV ratings and crowds have erased doubts people aren’t interested in women’s rugby league according to leading figures in the sport, as NSW and Queensland players prepare for a historic State of Origin game two sell-out in Newcastle on Thursday. But administrators and officials are being urged to continue the momentum, as players call for an extra week of NRLW finals football as soon as next season.

The Sky Blues go into Thursday’s match against the Maroons seeking a victory that would win back the shield. After surprising Queensland at Suncorp Stadium 22-12 in Game One, NSW will be roared on by around 30,000 fans in their bid to win the first-ever three-match women’s Origin series.

One of the inaugural Jillaroos, Katrina Fanning, said there is now “real appetite” for women’s rugby league, and that its style, skill and overall quality are being broadly acknowledged.

“We’ve had the interest for a long time, we’ve put the effort into developing the talent for quite some time now, and this last two to three years really dispelled the myth that people won’t watch it,” she said.

Amid steady calls from players, women’s State of Origin has expanded from one game in 2022 to two last year, and now three this year. Each match since 2022 has attracted more fans than the previous one, and a new attendance record of close to 30,000 is expected at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle on Thursday night.

Channel Nine commentator and former Jillaroo, Allana Ferguson, said this year’s expansion of the Origin series, and the public’s response to it, has “changed the landscape of women’s rugby league forever”.

She cited the popularity of the Matildas in helping shift community perceptions. “They showed that people do want to watch women’s sport, and that it is and can be taken seriously,” she said.

Channel Nine’s coverage of Game One reached almost 2m people, and attracted an average audience of 941,000 over the broadcast, easily out-rating an AFL match also screened that night.

The entertaining contest – highlighted by Jaime Chapman’s length-of-the-field try – broke the previous TV ratings record for a women’s rugby league match. That was set only in October’s NRLW grand final, and Channel Nine has committed to showing every match of the NRLW on free-to-air in an effort to grow the game.

Ferguson said the game must continue its trajectory, and “now it’s a matter of making the right decision within women’s rugby league”.

The NRLW will welcome two new teams next year to make a 12-team competition, which triggers an expansion of the players’ formal season dates by three weeks, as set out in the women’s first Collective Bargaining Agreement struck last year.

The NRL and Rugby League Players Association (RLPA) are discussing how the three-week extension will implemented. The regular season is likely to extend by two matches to allow each team to play one another, but there is a push from players to also introduce a third week of finals football, rather than the third week just be added on as a training week in pre-season.

Brisbane Broncos forward and RLPA board member Chelsea Lenarduzzi said another week of finals – which would mean a five- or six-team play-off series in next season’s 12-team competition – gives fans high-level entertainment and improves the quality on show.

“The more footy we play, the better the quality of game,” she said. “We’ve seen with the increase in Origin to three games how much the fans have bought into that.”

Despite the women’s competition’s growing popularity, clubs and the league have been wary of over-investing in the startup league. The NRLW formed with only four teams in 2018, in a decision taken by the NRL to ensure the competition was of a high standard, but also to limit potential financial losses.

Fanning – who is on the board of the Canberra Raiders – helped the club enter the NRLW last season when it expanded to 10 teams. She said clubs have “started to get the sense that it’s actually a business imperative, rather than a social responsibility, that actually the teams can cover their costs, and they do have genuine unique membership, as well as crossover membership”.

Fanning agrees a four-team finals series in a 12-team competition is “problematic”, but she believed all parties were working to eventually get to a longer season and a more extensive finals bracket. “Everyone’s on the same page, it’s just a bit of a point of difference in the speed of change,” she said.

Lenarduzzi believes a larger finals series is also in clubs’ interests, as it will mean more teams have something to play for, deeper into the season. “Making a top-four out of a 12-team comp, that’s a narrow window,” she said.

Ferguson agrees season extension at NRLW level is important, but she believes it must be supported by a reconfigured calendar that allows the state competitions in New South Wales and Queensland to help form established national pathways, down into grassroots and schools.

And she has also called on officials to consider slightly reducing the size of the ball, to better fit the average woman’s hand and enable more offloading, and acrobatic tries.

“Some of the tries we see the men do in the NRL are unbelievable, they can hold the footy in one hand, they can dive,” she said. “But women can do all the same things.”