A long-overdue return to blogging. Life has somewhat overtaken the time I needed to properly keep on top of all the news about women's sport - the furore over women's membership of Muirfield golf club was one story I really meant to blog about.

But the reason I started this blog, and the place at which it was born, was Henley Women's Regatta. It was in Henley last year that my crewmate Jordan said "Jo, you must write about coverage of women's sport". I agreed. I haven't really done the best job, but I can hopefully recitfy this in the months to come.

In the meantime, today is the eve of Henley Women's Regatta 2016. I'm writing this in a Henley café while awaiting the arrival of the fantastic Thames RC novice women's crew I've been coaching (part of a large, enthusiastic and committed novice squad who it's been a privilege to watch develop). The crew are racing tomorrow in the qualifiers of the intermediate club 8s event.

This in itself is a fantastic thing. Not that my crew are racing - although that's great too - but that they have to go through qualifiers. This is the first year since I won the same event in 2010 that there have been more than 16 entries for club eights at HWR. We had to time trial, but in the past five years there haven't been enough entries to make it necessary.

In fact this year has seen a LOT of entries across all levels, save perhaps for elite which remains undersubscribed. It's encouraging. In the past few years I and other club women rowers have expressed concern about the future of women's rowing. It was looking like numbers were dropping off across the board.

Evidently we were wrong, or maybe it's just taken until now for some of those who started rowing in the boom season post-London 2012 to get to the level where they feel able to compete at HWR. In any case, I like the change. I suspect the difference in standard between the slowest non-qualifying crew and the winners in each event, especially at intermediate level, will still be significant. But it's a welcome step in the right direction. If nothing else, it will make winning at HWR a more prestigious thing, and that's important - it needs to stand up in its own right as a regatta that's worth winning, that clubs want to win, and that clubs prioritise in the same way they might prioritise getting a men's 8 through to the Thames Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.

Which brings me on to the remarkable number of entries at HRR this year. It's been a record year there too across the board, but the number of crews entering the women's events is the highest I can remember (since I've been looking at it, anyway). There are 19 entries in the Remenham Challenge Cup for open women's eights (with eight places). An insane 46 entries for eight places in the Diamond Jubilee Challenge Cup for junior women's quads - a pretty new event. In the Princess Grace Challenge Cup for open women's quads, 25 entries. In the Princess Royal for open women's singles, 19 entries. Of these 474 athletes entered in women's events, only 144 will get to race the regatta proper.

Women want to be able to race at HRR because it's considered the top level a club rower can reasonably aspire to. It's an incredible experience to race down that course from the island to Stewards - even if, as in my case, you're losing by a country mile to the GB national crew. HWR, for all that it tries, can't compete. I for one would like to see more opportunity for top club-level women to race at HRR, as realistically the majority of those who qualify will be international athletes or hoping to make it internationally. Don't get me wrong, I'm massively proud of my intermediate club 8s medal from HWR 2010 and our course record, but I'm just as proud of qualifying for HRR and racing there.

At the moment, we train just as hard as our male counterparts at club level to race at a regatta which receives a fraction of the attention, is not considered to be as worthy by our clubs, and even has a course that's 612m shorter. As we prepare for equal numbers of male and female rowers at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, and as our country's female rowers are achieving at the same level as the men, isn't about time that women received parity at domestic level too?

To end on a positive note: last year HRR showed all its races live on YouTube with drone footage. This was awesome, but it came in the same year that HWR was forced to end its own live footage due to lack of sponsorship. This year, HWR is back online and streaming with drones. If you care about women's rowing, please try and watch at least some of the footage. It'll be streamed here during the regatta.