Ladies' rugby started at Alton in 1991, as a result of a fun match between the wives, daughters, girlfriends of the club and a carefully selected group of men. Three of the men trained the ladies for the match and they enjoyed it so much they decided to start a Ladies' team.

Women's rugby in England was in its early stages then, and there were about fifty or so teams and a league. Alton Ladies played their first real match against London Welsh as a curtain raiser to the ex-Internationals match on the day that the huge ball travelled around the county in the run-up to the World Cup in 1991.

Alton Ladies played that year in the Merit Table and lost most games; winning just two at the end of the season, the following year they entered the league and finished about half-way gaining in experience all the time. In 1995 they won through the play-offs to enter Division Two which was soon renamed Premier II and stayed at that level ever since, apart from the year they won Premier II in 2001 and entered the top league in the country. Like most clubs before us that proved just too hard and we were relegated at the end of the year.

Over the years the ladies have had many players who have achieved representative honours. In the Ladies' game the representative structure revolves around regions and at one stage the South East Regional team had nine or ten Alton players every year. Irene Wilson played for Scotland several times, Beth Mills played for England A, Hayley Kemp for Wales A and Vanessa Huxford who started her career here before moving to Wasps has been a regular England player for many years. Currently the Ladies have not had any Irish internationals.

Unfortunately, in 2005/2006 we were unable to raise a side. This was due, in part to the number of players who had been taken out of the game in preparation for the Women's World Cup in September. Ladies rugby was restarted again for the 2006/2007 season with the intention to rise once again to their former glory.