The champions who are the best-kept secret in England

Anyone seeking proof that money and logic are estranged bedfellows in English sport should take a look at women's rugby union. While millions of pounds are routinely pumped into high-profile male events, some of which are little better than lame ducks, one genuine success story remains a ridiculously well-kept secret.

The facts, though, should be screamed from the rooftops. England are the world champions and 8,000 women are turning out regularly for their clubs, always on a Sunday, mind, so as not to clash with men's matches. What's more, the whole operation gets by on a budget of pounds 200,000 - less than the annual salary of many an Allied Dunbar Premiership player.

Amazingly, the Rugby Football Union for Women are quite relaxed about the situation and exude almost a perverse pride at making a little go a long way. However, as England start to build towards their World Cup defence in Amsterdam next May, the current account will feel the strain over the months to come, starting with today's international against Spain in Madrid.

The season continues early next year with games against France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and by the time the World Cup is over the RFUW will have good reason to thank their latest sponsor, Swiss Life, for underwriting the England team to the tune of pounds 20,000, with a pounds 10,000 bonus to retain the trophy.

Help from the 10 official suppliers to the England team comes in kind as well as cash and is bewilderingly varied - everything from meat to sports bras. But Rosie Golby, formerly the RFUW's secretary and now president, remembers even more straitened times.

"We were self-funding until 1994 and the players paid for everything - shirts, kit, you name it - even at international level. The girls paid to go to the 1994 World Cup and volunteers are still the sport's lifeblood. But, financially, England are women's rugby's most successful team, although the players and management still contribute to their own travel and accommodation.

"Most players take it up at college and carry on playing when they're working. They train at night, often driving hundreds of miles in the process. Obviously, we can never match the men for raw power but women's rugby is fluent and skilful, and great to watch."

England played their first international, against Wales, 10 years ago but did not really come into their own until 1990 when the Great Britain squad split up into the four home countries. Their first defeat was inflicted by the United States in 1991 but their second, a 15-17 setback against France at Northampton, only happened last February.

Several members of the side which beat the US in the 1994 World Cup final in Edinburgh are still playing, including Nicola Ponsford, who is one of only two full-time RFUW employees. A third national development officer has just been appointed and will work from the RFUW's new office in Newbury - the operation is at present based at de Montfort University in Bedford.

The sport may be in its infancy but the Corinthian spirit which drives it on is a throw back to a bygone era when everything was run exceedingly well by enthusiastic and good-humoured amateurs. Women's rugby may be impoverished but it's fun, and it definitely should not be a secret.

Source Citation
Trow, Paul. "Rugby Union: Riches of the poor relations; Paul Trow looks at the champions who are the best-kept secret in England." Independent on Sunday [London, England] 7 Dec. 1997

"How to play rugby"

KATE HERBERT

In the beginning there was rugby for the boys, in the Seventies women played it for fun, and in 1983 women's rugby officially arrived with the affiliation of 12 all-female sides to the RFU. Participation has grown 30-fold since then - time to take these ladies seriously.

How to do it

There are no girlie concessions. women's rugby rules are identical to men's.

Popularity

One of the fastest-growing women's sports. There are around 300 women's rugby clubs in the UK, with 220 in England alone. Around 10,000 women and an increasing number of girls play in the UK. Sexes are segregated from 12 years old.

What you should look like

Brian Moore and Rob Andrew are hardly identical, are they? In the same way, and contrary to popular belief, female rugby players are big on strength and fitness, not necessarily as big as beefcakes.

Celebrity players

Not yet. Media attention has been too small for a Sally Gunnell of the rugby world to emerge.

Where to do it

Most women's teams are linked to men's clubs (often on inferior or badly lit pitches) or aligned to college and university teams.

Contact for courses

The SRFU in Scotland looks after women's rugby. In England the RFUW looks after itself: contact 01635 278177 or 01234 261521 for details of clubs and training. In Wales contact the WWRU (01633 220249); in Ireland the IWRU (01 288 9146). Rather than signing up for courses you should pitch up at a club and muck in. There are also schemes for coach and referee training.

What to say

'Wrap em up man'; 'You're in for a boshing'; 'Give it some big welly.'

Kate Herbert

Source Citation
"Women's rugby." Guardian [London, England] 11 Oct. 1996

Hot Pursuits: Mud, sweat and tears - Jill Turner tackles the tough reality of women's rugby

The first person I see when I turn up at Richmond Football Club in London to try my hand at women's rugby is a girl with her arm in a sling. This does not look good. 'What happened?' I ask. 'Oh, I had an operation on the ligaments.' 'Not a rugby injury then,' I say with relief. 'Oh yes. My shoulder kept falling out, dislocating,' she says brightly, 'so I had this done to pull it all together again.' Yes, rugby union chicks are hardy lasses. But contrary to popular belief, rugby-playing women do not look like Brian Moore with long hair. In fact many of the women's squad at Richmond RFC are pretty and petite, some even with pretty pink gum shields.

But ladylike they are not, at least not out on the pitch. In reflection of this the coach, JD, refers to them as 'guys'. Down here on the park femininity is purely effeminate.'Come on guys,' JD yells as we trot up and down, 'put a bit of pace into it.' This is okay, a bit of running about, I think. But it is only the start. Introducing the ball makes things a lot more complicated. Passing behind, passing over people's heads, passing and skipping round the back of a player to receive the ball before passing again.

'Talk to each other guys!' This doesn't mean have a little chat. This means scream someone's name and then hurl the ball ferociously at their guts.

'Always stay behind the ball, be back from the person who's passing to you,' Sophie the scrum-half tells me as I go haring off potentially handing penalties to the opposition. Still, apart from that, passing and catching goes quite well. I don't drop the ball. This I'm told is called having 'good hands'.

Tackling practice comes next. I'm expected to launch myself into the air at a large inflated column rather like a punchbag. 'Annihilate him at the ankles,' yells JD. I do my best and end up on my face in the mud with a very sore side. 'Nice job,' says JD. I'm flattered.

I always thought rugby players wore gum shields to protect their teeth from flying fists. I find out the hard way that they're worn because, when tackling, you are likely to drive your front teeth hard into your bottom lip. I now have the fat mouth to prove it.

Tackling a person turns out to be much harder than tackling a bag. At 5ft 7in, with a swimmer's broad shoulders, I'm not a small girl, and many of the Richmond ladies are tinier than me. But tackling a woman is strangely painful. The key is to go in with your shoulder, grab them round the thighs and lean on them as they go down, using them to cushion your fall. Women are supposed to be lighter and, well, softer, than men, but in this situation they're not.

Women's rugby is just like men's rugby really. Lots of yelling, swearing, mud, sweat and collisions. Even the changing room has a masculine atmosphere - communal showers, hearty banter, women walking around in unselfconscious states of undress.

Although the female sex sometimes looks with indulgence at male stupidity in running around after a piece of inflated leather, they too can be capable of such single-minded foolishness. When you're out there, you don't worry that it might be a comical and pointless exercise. You just care about getting that ball forward.

But soon it begins to pour with rain. Hot bodies start to steam, and my enthusiasm dampens. The woman with the sling is watching from the touchline. 'Perfect rugby weather,' she says beaming. I'm cold, I'm bruised, I have mud on my legs, in my hair, in my ears, in my mouth and all over my face.

And now I'm going to get soaked as well. Behind me the injured player is relishing every moment, wishing she was out there again. I begin to wonder for her sanity.

Later, in a welcome hot bath, I reflect that there are two things that surprised me about rugby. Firstly, it's so complicated. There are so many things to remember - always get behind the ball, don't get on your knees when picking it up from the ground, and so on - nearly 180 pages of rules. Not a sport for the witless.

The second was that it's actually quite fun. Despite a fat lip and being soaked through, I'd had quite a good time. Everyone accepts that boys will be boys and enjoy mucking about getting scraped and bruised. But what's often overlooked is that the girls used to enjoy a bit of rough and tumble, and some occasionally still do. Oh, and there's a major fringe benefit in taking up women's rugby. After training, the clubhouse is always full of players from the men's team.

Jill Turner played rugby at Richmond Football Club. Telephone: 0181-332 7112.

Source Citation
"Hot Pursuits: Mud, sweat and tears - Jill Turner tackles the tough reality of women's rugby." Guardian [London, England] 11 Oct. 1996

Gill Burns: profile

Now for that other England-Wales match. Stephen Jones talks to England's worthy captain, Gill Burns

THE SPORTS pitches at Range High School, Formby, on the Southport road out of Liverpool, were frosted white and frozen solid on Thursday. The boot studs of Gill Burns, physical education teacher, clattered as if she was walking on concrete. We were briefly worried, as the camera shutter clicked away, that she would turn as blue as her jersey.

Back in the warmth of the staffroom, circulation returned and she prepared for lessons. This afternoon, at Welford Road, Leicester, Burns leads England against Wales in the inaugural match of the new Home Nations rugby tournament. It is her first season as captain of her country, and her achievement is something of which the school can be immeasurably proud.

But perhaps not even her own pupils realise how proud they should be. The explosion in women's rugby, still gaining converts in masses by the month, is in its way the sporting story of the age. It is difficult to believe that any sport has ever grown so quickly, difficult not to be in awe at the dedication and sacrifice you encounter in players at all the levels, the thirst for learning and then refinement, and all in the face of severe financial deprivation and the other built-in obstacles of mainstream culture and perception.

And yet when you encounter Burns, it all suddenly seems less surprising. She took up rugby in 1987. "I met some hockey players at a tournament who were wearing rugby club sweaters. We talked about rugby and I went with them to Waterloo where they trained. In my first match I was crawling around on the floor and conceding penalties because I didn't know the laws. Afterwards, there was this incredible buzz. I had played many other sports, but I thought to myself, `I love this'."

Rugby was not to know then that it had recruited its own future champion, but the extraordinary athleticism of the new player must have been obvious immediately. Burns represented British Colleges at swimming, athletics, basketball and hockey, and still competes in athletics, ranging from shot put and hammer to sprints. She plays for Waterloo and England in the heavy-duty position of No8. "She is incredibly powerful off the back of the scrum," Emma Mitchell, the England scrum-half, said.

And yet, in the summer break, Burns reverts to the family "trade" of ballet: her mother teaches dance. "After the season is over I dance like mad to be ready for shows in June and July. My mother reckons the reason I can jump so well in the lineout is all the dancing lessons." Even among the ranks of international sportsmen and women, this range of physical capability is astounding.

So is the ferocious commitment of the leading players. Burns trains every day; all the England squad follow precise conditioning programmes, geared to bring them to a peak for today's match and for the forthcoming matches against Scotland and Ireland. And it is not even enough, in the self-help philosophy which has always sustained the women's game, for the international players to inspire merely by on-field example. Burns takes a shining proprietorial pride in the fortunes of the wider game, not least because it is to the developing roots they must return for their sport, week-in, week-out.

There is a quiet messianic quality about her, a strength which has grown since her elevation to captain. She succeeded Karen Almond, the fly-half and the most influential player the game has produced worldwide. Last week, eating up an army assault course before the TV cameras during a team-bonding trip to Arborfield Garrison, or expounding on a passion for her sport in her own staffroom, Burns came across as a perfect spokeswoman for women players everywhere.

"Everyone in the England squad is keen to develop the game all over the country. The self-help thing is huge. We all go to development days in our areas. We introduce people to the game so that they grow and develop and join the game."

She is wary of the sheer enthusiasm, the sheer number of new clubs, wary that a small number of enthusiasts with a vision of a new club could hold back another one nearby: "It's better to have one club with 24 players than two with 12."

The sacrifice, in time and money, is painful. Sponsorships are still in their infancy, avidly welcomed yet small: "It is always a struggle, always. For league matches we might meet at seven on Sunday morning, pile four or five people into each car and go to the other end of the country. My car is four years old and it's done 150,000 miles. I spend all my wages, I haven't saved a penny. It costs us all an awful lot to play the game. When we get together in the squad we always talk about the same thing: winning the lottery, and how we would use the money."

There was real excitement last season when the England v Wales match at Sale made a profit from gate receipts; even more recently when the team were told that their travel expenses would be met for the forthcoming international in France. Rare delight, which deserve to become familiar.

I wondered if everything was to be seen in the context of the health of the overall game. For example, England, the world champions, threaten to dominate the fledgling Home Nations championship. Would she regard an England defeat as the result that makes the championship? "Absolutely not. We will lose sometime, but I don't want to be the England captain when it happens. None of the team want to be playing when it happens." So, quite properly, the results of internationals are seen as the end-all.

And now the next leap, and a profound one. Anne O'Flynn, a versatile youngster playing for Waterloo, recently made the England A squad. The significance of her selection is that she is the first one to reach the higher echelons who began as a rugby player, rather than one who converted later. The advent of New Image rugby for both sexes, and a determined effort by the Rugby Football Union for Women to established youth rugby, means that career players should soon arrive in numbers.

O'Flynn learned the game at mini-rugby, has played without interruption since and now, in her late teens, has a range of skills which even some of the current national team, still essentially in their early years as players, would envy: "She is the first of a new breed of player. It will really help. One of the problems in women's rugby is that no one has the ability to kick long distances. It means that teams can concede penalties and not be punished. But there are young players around now who have grown up with rugby and who can kick much longer."

So the numbers continue to grow, the international scene burgeons. The third World Cup will take place in the Netherlands in 1998. There is even Sports Council funding, a grant of POUNDS 45,000, to be devoted, typically, not to assisting players, or paying for full-time officials to help the swamped ranks of the game's officialdom, but to the development of the sport.

On Thursday, Burns tried to put the global picture into abeyance for once, to concentrate on the final build-up for Wales, on what she would say in the team meetings, musing on a strange Welsh selection in the back row. What were they up to?

Then off to put some more miles on the car. It is a long time since I was so impressed by someone in sport. It is not so much that she is a fine player and athlete, such a selfless ambassador for women's rugby, or, indeed, some kind of valiant amateur throwback to rugby as it once was. It is that Burns came across, in every respect, as a genuine, 24-carat English sporting heroine.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 1996 **********

Source Citation
"Charging towards the men; Rugby Union." Sunday Times [London, England] 4 Feb. 1996

All fall down

Chris Dighton insists that rugby has shed its public-school image and is rapidly becoming the people's game.

...

The spin-off is that parents become involved; dads get itchy feet, reviving memories of younger days or giving the game a go - and so, too, the mothers. If you had mentioned women's rugby in clubhouses a couple of years ago, the reaction would have been a leery smirk or a sneering put-down. No longer. Supply is based on demand and the demand is there. Bromsgrove are starting a women's section next season.

For a game perceived to be so chauvinistic, and the wives of international players might have cause to complain at the way the RFU prefers them to be seen (occasionally) and not heard, the club game for women is remarkably open. At Wasps, the women pay the same playing subscription as the men, and are allowed the same run of the club.

'It makes sense for the club to look after us right, which they do,' said Claire Vyvyan, the Wasps and England centre. 'We are utilising the facilities at a time when they would otherwise be dormant, and we are putting money over the bar. The club recognise that the women's game is here and growing, and they have come to respect it for what it is.' Women's rugby started in the universities - Vyvyan began at Loughborough, just to see what it was like - and has taken hold. 'I can't imagine not playing,' she said, 'and, when I left Loughborough to start work in London, I immediately set out to find a club. The appeal is that it is the ultimate team game.

'It is a different game from the one played by men, and has to be because of the physical differences. The fallout from two nine-stone women forwards colliding is obviously a lot less than when two 15-stone men crash into each other. But what is lost in the physical battle is made up for elsewhere - the games tends to be far more open, the handling swifter. Three or four years ago men would come along and they would be ready to put us down. Apart from the inevitable few who still insist on sterotyping us, and always will, most were pleasantly surprised, and have become supporters.' Counted among the pro-women's rugby lobby is the England hooker, Brian Moore, who has helped coach the women and has seen them pull off intricate moves that are still beyond the grasp of the Grand Slam winners. Indeed, England are the holders of the Women's World Cup, having beaten the US 38-23 in Edinburgh last year, and they even have their own commercial sponsor. In rugby, the pension book for men arrives at 35 when the snarl of aggression has dimmed, but not the urge to go on proving that you can still play a decent game. 'There are some very skilful sides around and often you will find a quality first team will play down through the years and turn into a quality veteran side,' said Ivan Gunn, a former captain of Old Walcountians Vets in Surrey. 'The players know their game inside out and you will find vets' sides running for years and years unbeaten.' It is very different game to the traditional end-of-season Sevens tournaments, but the spirit is the same: a game played for out-and-out enjoyment. Gunn is an example of the old player who never quite hung up his boots. Injury forced him out of the game at 20, but, shortly after reaching his 40th birthday, he was roped by a side short of players.

...

"Rugby World Cup: All fall down - Chris Dighton insists that rugby has shed its public-school image and is rapidly becoming the people's game." Guardian [London, England] 20 May 1995

Player profile: Anny Freitas (Scotland)

Alasdair Reid on Anny Freitas, the open-side flanker more than happy in her aggressive work

AS an exercise in preconception-demolition, the Women's Rugby World Cup, staged in Scotland a year ago, proved a class act. Raised from the rubble of a tournament originally scheduled to take place in Holland, the Scottish women's rugby union produced a competition that ran with gloriously improbable smoothness from start to finish. Their real feat, however, lay in showing a dubious Scottish public, once and for all, that the second sex could indeed play rugby.

And even if the standards of play sometimes fell short of what some coverage, strained to a patronising consistency through the clenched teeth of political correctness, tried to claim, the improvement through the tournament came in leaps and bounds. None more so than Scotland, who finished in fifth place after a rapturously-received victory over Canada in the final of the shield competition .

It was a memorable performance after some distinctly forgettable showings by their male counterparts in the Five Nations. Central to the success was the explosive play of the Scottish back row, with Anny Freitas, the 24-year-old Edinburgh Accies flanker, the undoubted star of their show.

Not content with one thistle on her jersey, Freitas shaved another on the back of her head. A year on, her current trichological adventure is a sort of Mohican minimalism ``just a head shave with a bit of a fringe'' but when she wins her 10th cap against Italy at Meggetland this afternoon her ability to concentrate the minds of opponents with her forceful, driving play will be undiminished.

Scotland have not been beaten since the World Cup. They have, however, chosen their opponents carefully and Freitas admits that England, the ultimate winners last April, are still a class apart. She believes, though, that the standards of the two countries have moved closer together.

``I think the gap is definitely getting narrower. England are still a very formidable force and still the team to beat, but we're getting stronger with every game. I can see in the near future there could be a real contest.''

Yet even after the success of last year's tournament, Freitas still senses a need to stress the fact that female aggression is no different from the male version, a function of individual character rather than gender and perfectly acceptable so long as it is positive and controlled. The notion that women can play that way may be uncomfortable to some, but the suggestion that women's rugby can somehow develop as a gentler, nicer, version is a complete non-starter to her.

``In a contact sport, if you're not aggressive you'll get hurt. There is this thing that society doesn't expect women to be aggressive and I think there is a strong, positive connection between being aggressive and being assertive. Everyone has the potential to be aggressive and it's only negative when it is associated with violence.''

It would be wrong to see Freitas, a student of community education, as a strident pioneer, obsessed with the issue of women's rugby rather than the playing of it. She was introduced to the game four years ago and almost surprised herself by finding enjoyment in something she had previously despised.

``I just went along with a couple of mates and that was it. I actually hated rugby before I started playing, basically because I didn't understand it. I used to watch it and it just seemed so static, there was no dynamic. There was also the fact that it had the stereotype of being the middle class game and being completely male dominated. I suppose I discovered rugby by playing rugby.''

Her discovery was Scotland's gain, too. Her importance to the side can be measured by the fact that, having decided to give international rugby a miss for a while as she concentrated on her final year studies, she was persuaded back into the fold by the Scottish team management earlier this year. This afternoon, against a confident side that has already inflicted a heavy defeat on Scotland's A team, Freitas will be trying to demolish a few Italian preconceptions as well.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 1995

Source Citation
"Demolishing the preconceptions; Anny Freitas." Sunday Times [London, England] 30 Apr. 1995

Prejudice: response to Probyn

Sally Jones

Winning the 1994 World Cup is just one reason why frail little flowers can play rugby, says Sally Jones.

It had to happen. After 12 years of growth in relative obscurity, women's rugby is in the dock thanks to one unfortunate neck injury in a club match and some ill-judged remarks from that celebrated penseur and wit, Jeff Probyn, the former England prop.

The injury, to a 20-year-old student, was caused when a scrum collapsed during a match between Portsmouth University and Worthing. The woman was airlifted to Odstock Hospital in Salisbury, where the neck injury was found to be painful but less severe than at first feared, with one bone broken, the vertebrae bruised but apparently no irreparable damage to the spinal cord.

Probyn used the incident to launch an attack on women's rugby as a whole, saying that the game was unsuitable for women and that its rapid expansion would result in more injuries. On BBC radio he declared: ``Women have a place in society, and that's a certain place, and I don't think it includes playing on rugby fields.'' He claimed that women were not physically capable of a game where the collapse of a scrum might bring half a ton of people down on one player.

``Bah, humbug!'' was the typical reaction from leading women rugby players over this piece of misplaced gallantry. So what gives Probyn the right to try to deny over half the population the chance to take part in one of the most exciting team games known to man (and, increasingly, to woman)? And why should it be perfectly acceptable for men to break their necks and pull their hamstrings, but not women?

Admittedly, rugby is a potentially dangerous game. According to Sports Council statistics, rugby players run a higher risk of injury than competitors in any other sport. On average, each player runs a one-in-ten chance of sustaining at least a minor injury on every outing. Most seasons bring a small crop of tragic incidents of players (thankfully, no women so far) crippled for life after breaking their necks or backs.

With such a high incidence of injury, nobody who plays rugby can be unaware of the risks. The England international, Carol Isherwood, one of the founders of the Women's Rugby Football Union (WRFU) and a highly-experienced coach, admits: ``All sport carries an element of danger and you can only reduce that so far. What we do is make sure that people are adequately coached and have the technique to deal with everything from scrums to lineouts. We'd never dream of putting slight teenage newcomers in sides with a lot of powerful experienced players, and we have a very good injury record indeed because of this.

``It's outrageous for Probyn to lay down the law on what is acceptable and what is feminine. Perhaps he should redefine his concept of femininity and also his ideas about commitment. We ran a World Cup on less than the Twickenham champagne budget, and the game's taken off safely and successfully, despite us having to operate on a shoestring. The likes of Probyn have no idea how far we've come on negligible resources and his remarks belittle everything we've achieved.''

Carolyn Carr, development officer of the Women's Sports Foundation, was equally indignant: ``Why should it still be so unacceptable in some quarters for women to play a physical contact sport? It's certainly rooted in all the traditional prejudices, and the way the men treasure the macho bit of being a big, tough, he-man rugby player. Maybe they think that image loses a bit of its impact when more and more women are showing that they too can play.''

Certainly women's rugby has grown rapidly in popularity since the WRFU was founded in 1983 from a hard core of around 200 players representing 12 clubs. More than 5,000 women play regularly, as well as hundreds of girls under the age of 12 playing the less physical New Image rugby in mixed teams as part of the initiative of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to introduce youngsters to the game.

At international level the home nations are improving fast. England, beaten finalists in the first women's World Cup in Cardiff three years ago, went one better in May, taking the world title in spectacular style over the defending champions, America.

Slowly the women's game is attracting wider and more enlightened media coverage. The BBC televised highlights of both World Cups, and there are growing numbers of features in which journalists discuss the game and its stars on their merits rather than treating the very idea of women playing rugby with the same sniggering prurience that Les Dawson once brought to jokes about female mud wrestlers.

I still vividly remember covering England's first international against France at Richmond in the late Eighties and overhearing a male reporter asking one of the home side whether the players would swap shirts after the match. The reply from this highly trained, dedicated athlete at the start of the most important match of her career was to the point and quite unprintable.

Of course, large pockets of this type of patronising chauvinism remain, particularly among the more bovine male players who like to imagine rugby as an exclusively masculine ritual, and any woman who tries to muscle in is at best unfeminine and at worst lesbian a major term of abuse in such circles. During a recent edition of Rugby Special, a clip of women's rugby was shown. After much guffawing one of the male studio guests declared that he would never date a woman rugby player, as though they were members of a different breed, like a particularly brutal species of Martian.

It is the same knee-jerk male chauvinism that until recently dictated that we frail little flowers who are perfectly capable of bearing children and who, in the old Eastern bloc countries, are doing most of the hard dirty manual jobs were too delicate to run marathons, train as fighter pilots or compete at 400-metres hurdles. Try telling that to the likes of Sally Gunnell and Rosa Mota.

As Sue Dorrington, the England hooker, declared wearily: ``No one sees the likes of Jason Leonard and Jeremy Guscott getting injured and sidelined for months on end and says `men shouldn't play rugby', so why should they say that to us? I've had my share of knocks and bruises we all have but we're responsible adults and we accept that. I don't need anyone's approval to play this game. Rugby has given me a wonderful social life, a level of fitness most other people can only dream about and some of the greatest moments of my life. To deny me that because I might get hurt is paternalistic and utterly ludicrous.''

RUGBY FACT BOX

How to join.

Women's rugby: There are more than 250 clubs in Britain. For details of your local one contact Rosie Golby, The Rugby Football Union, Twickenham TW1 1DZ (081-892 8161)

Mini-rugby: David Shaw, the RFU's National Coaching and Youth Development Officer, says: ``Contact your local rugby club and see if mini rugby is provided. You must check that they operate with a qualified coach. It is also worth choosing a club which gives a caring impression.''

There are 2,500 registered rugby clubs in England and 8,000 mini rugby teams. For more information contact The RFU National Coaching and Youth Development Office, Nortonthorpe Mills, Scissett, West Yorkshire. HD8 9LA. Similar schemes are run by the rugby authorities in Wales and Scotland.

The cost: Will vary, but Saracens charges Pounds 40 per year for family membership which includes the insurance. You do not pay extra if you have more than one child in the scheme.

Kitting out Claire Humphreys cost: Boots Pounds 20. Safety studs Pounds 4. Shorts Pounds 10. Shirt Pounds 15. Socks Pounds 5. Gumshield Pounds 3.

Copyright (C) The Times, 1994

Source Citation
"Good try, lads, but we're still playing; Women's Rugby." Times [London, England] 28 Nov. 1994

World cup: This is not proper rugby - and it's time women knew

Mark Reason

CANDI ORSINI is a stuntwoman who makes her living by jumping off high buildings and crashing cars. She will earn nothing for her pains when she plays centre for the United States against England in this afternoon's final of the women's rugby world championship in Edinburgh.

Given her profession, she ought to redefine the term crash-ball centre, but that is not her style. Instead, she is one of the deftest ball-handlers I have seen, and that includes most of the concrete-handed threequarters in this year's Five Nations championship.

Orsini plays like a Frenchman, like Charvet or Cordoniou, and there can hardly be a higher compliment. The French centres ``fixe'' the tackler as they pass. They hold his eyes, carry the ball high, take him out by attacking the inside shoulder, and then they deliver.

That is Orsini's talent. Three times in the semi-final massacre of Wales she made tries through exquisite passes, and every one was given with the tackler about to enter the demolition business.

There can be no doubt that her career as a stuntwoman last seen alongside Bob Hoskins in Super Mario Bros and soon to be continued in Hulk Hogan's Thunder in Paradise is a huge benefit. Kipling's ``If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs'' is one thing, but to keep your head when the odds favour decapitation is quite another.

``I don't know if rugby helps stunt work or if stunt work helps rugby,'' Orsini said. ``I do know that because kicking is not so good in the women's game, it has helped to perfect our passing.

``Our coach Franck Boivert (yes, he's French, and he is also married to Elise Huffer, Orsini's centre companion and another astute passer) wants us to keep the ball alive, to use the whole field. We practise running off the ball, we practise switching from group handling to spreading the line, we practise a lot of running from deep onto the ball.''

And they learn quickly. Not just Orsini, but also the fly-half Jos Bergmann and full-back Jen Crawford, outstanding runners who benefit from her guile.

All three have one thing in common: they are all athletes. Orsini is not just a stuntwoman, but an expert water-skier and an Olympic handball gold medallist. Bergmann has played football for 14 years. Crawford was the first female high school basketball player to score 1,000 points in a season. You may not have to be an athlete to play rugby well, but you do have to be athletic.

Maybe that is part of the reason why the USA are averaging 91 points a game, and why their backs are the only real gold in a tournament of dross. Orsini and Co prove that women can play rugby to a very high level, but at the moment more players than not would struggle to make a school third XV.

England are the only other consistent exceptions to that, and even they have only four or five players of real quality. What they do have is a pack, and a fly-half who will attempt to deny the USA any possession today. That and the belief of Karen Almond, the English fly-half, that the USA are not good under pressure. England's chance of winning lies in the strength of their pack, the direction of their half-backs and the hope that the Americans will bottle it.

What they also have is a dreary attitude to the game. In their semi-final against France they played a joyless, attritional slog that had one gagging on recent memories of their male international counterparts. Women's rugby has only really been going for 10 years and you had hoped that it would still be fun. Happily, that is the way of most teams, but England already wear the tortured earnestness of the professional sportswoman.

The only people entitled to such expressions were in the tiny crowd. The little relief they had was in the sly observation of how the women mirror the national styles of the men. The Scots love to ruck. Ireland have a feisty scrum-half and some quirky manoeuvres; they even attempted the garryowen once or twice, but nobody had the leg power to achieve it. England are the roast beefs. And the French showed a typical mixture of flair and naughty confrontation.

Their lock, Valerie Lenoir, was spoken to three times by the referee in their semi-final. In the end she was shrugging and offering dismissive hand gestures with true Gallic genius. She left the pitch with a rude one-fingered sign at the English. She only fell short by not assaulting the referee in the tunnel.

The real shortfall, though, is in the quality of the women's game. Debbie Francis, a winger who played for England in the last World Cup and who now represents Scotland, said: ``I think there is an appalling lack of publicity and interest in women's rugby.''

It strikes me that there is an extraordinarily large amount of publicity, given the generally low standards of play. The kicking is abysmal. Ball-retention in the tackle is fragile, to say the least. There are more turnovers than in a chain of pastry shops. Barely half of the kicks are caught at the first attempt. Tackling is high, as are most of the scrummaging positions. Passes are shovelled.

Unfortunately, little of the publicity points this out. The tendency is to treat women's rugby as a freak show that is really played to a very high level. Such a pretence is not politically correct, it is downright patronising. It says: ``You are really quite good, considering you're girls.''

Try telling the truth. Most of you are not very good. You're not within light years of the standard that women could reach.

These things wouldn't be worth saying if the women were playing for fun, with a ``sod the rest of you'' attitude, but they are not. They are playing to promote their game, to encourage sponsorship, to increase coverage, perhaps even to persuade the likes of the RFU to assist them financially. Money, however, is usually drawn to quality products and until the standard of play dramatically improves money will be scarce.

That is a bit of a catch-22, because the women could do with such money to finance a recruitment campaign to attract the type of co-ordinated sportswomen that the game so badly needs. For the sake of that endeavour, I hope that the Americans win today, and that they show the elan of their rugby in doing so.

They are worth watching. And the spectacle might just attract a better class of sportswoman to take up the game and raise women's rugby to a level that really would be worth talking about.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 1994

Source Citation
"This is not proper rugby - and it's time women knew; Womens Rugby Union." Sunday Times [London, England] 24 Apr. 1994

World cup: feature

Sue Mott

THE audible crunch of the scrum was proof, if any were needed, that the first ever women's rugby international between Scotland and England was no place for flower-arrangers. The scoffs of macho detractors died in the throat as the thunderous business of England's 26-0 victory riveted the attention of 5,000 devotees at Boroughmuir RFC in Edinburgh on Friday.

Three tries and the accurate boot of Deidrie Mills ensured England's unbeaten progress to the quarter-finals of the women's rugby world championship. But it was the standard of the mauls, rucks and tackles that had the crowd on its feet in admiration and exhortation. The Scots sang Flower of Scotland, the England bench screamed: ``Get in her face!''

England, beaten only once in five years, are on course for a final showdown against the USA, whose 121-0 win over Japan was both an indication of brute force and the lack of stature of their opponents. With a 4ft 11in shop assistant in the squad and two players aged 47, Japan were long shots for the crown.

But Scotland were pround of themselves. Sandra ``Gnomi'' Williamson played with the snap and ferocity of Gary Armstrong at scrum-half, while the forwards, exemplified by Pogo Paterson, were ``superb, committed, gutsy'', according to full-back Mickey Cave.

There was never any doubt in high places that the world championship would be a success. The president of Kazakhstan sent his team into the fray with this ringing endorsement: ``This tournament of youth, sport and beauty will stay a brilliant memory in the hearts of all the participants.''

He probably did not have in mind the night 10 of the Irish team graced a policemen's disco with one of their number dressed in a size 26 nylon floral dress and yellow-flowered swimming cap. But it was a ``brilliant memory'' anyway. Not least for the policemen who arrived at the Irish hotel next morning to express their personal admiration.

The world championship is that sort of event. An exuberant mix of fierce pride, practical jokes and penury with tooth-rattling tackles thrown in. ``I wouldn't like to put our first team out against that lot,'' a male voice was heard to mutter as the Scots and Russians collided at Gala on Wednesday.

A number of preconceptions that women rugby players are a bunch of big, butch Berthas with whom one would not share even a well-lit alley have been ripped asunder and thrown to the merry Scottish winds.

Kazakhstan, for instance, have a hairdresser in the team. They are here for the greater glory of the former Soviet republic and the experience of foreign competition. They had played only three internationals before this. They had never seen tackle bags or rucking shields before they used each other instead.

They were, however, magnificently well-organised compared with the Russians who arrived at Manchester airport with no transport to Edinburgh, nowhere to stay and no money to pay for it. But, responding to the Scottish equivalent of Dunkirk spirit, a coach company donated a bus and driver and StJohn's Hospital, Livingstone, found space in their nurses' quarters. Handy for the Accident and Emergency Department.

Admittedly, the bus subsequently failed its MOT and the Russians were 30 minutes late for the Scotland match. ``No problem,'' said one of the tournament organisers, operating from a cupboard in Meadowbank Stadium. ``It gave more time for the crowd to gather.''

The fact the championship is being held at all, when Holland withdrew as hosts only 90 days before the scheduled start, is a tribute to Scots efficiency, shameless begging and sheer madness.

``The sport does tend to attract boisterous types,'' Joanne Hall, the Ireland team manager, said. ``Total headers, we call them. But you have very, very quiet girls taking up rugby too. Funnily enough, they're often the most aggressive on the pitch. It does bring out the assertive in you but I've found I'm a lot easier to live with when I play rugby.''

Everybody plays down the violence. ``All sports can be physical,'' the players tend to say, as though savage collisions with 13 stones worth of lose-head prop are an everyday occurrence. Still, Debbie Francis, Scotland's vice-captain, received her worst injury, a broken ankle, when she tripped while out shopping.

The women who play rugby are adamant that no other sport could possibly provide the same camaraderie or intense satisfaction. ``It's the challenge,'' Francis said. ``A girl doesn't have too many chances to use her body to the absolute maximum. This is it.''

Commitment is total. Each Scottish player paid more than Pounds 400 to take part and the Irish team up to Pounds 600 each. The pervasive pennilessness, the youth of the sport, the panic-stations organising and the fact that Scottish students were last-minute replacements for Spain have all contributed to aspersions that the world championship is no better than a glorified scrum.

But it has changed attitudes, enlivened police discos and, most precious of all, given the sport a hefty shove towards national esteem.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 1994

Source Citation
"As we thought, rugby is a girls' game; Rugby Union." Sunday Times [London, England] 17 Apr. 1994

Gill Burns: profile

Sally Jones

To watch Gill Burns at the barre, a tall, striking figure with the poise only achieved by those who started ballet almost before they could walk, it is hard to believe this is the woman who could prove crucial to the England women's rugby union team's World Cup campaign over the next two weeks.

Burns, 29, an outstanding all-round athlete and a teacher of physical education at Culcheth High School, Warrington, plays No8 for the England side that reached the final of the inaugural World Cup in 1991 and is tipped to go one better in Edinburgh.

Ironically, Burns attributes much of her sporting prowess to her early grounding in ballet even though, at a whisker under 6ft and 131/2st, she is no longer the traditional shape for a ballerina. ``My mother runs dancing schools near Liverpool and I was there from the moment I arrived, in a cot or hanging in the corner in my baby bouncer while she took classes,'' she said. ``I took part in my first charity show as a babe in arms, being serenaded by a man singing `Thank Heaven For Little Girls'. I spent the whole number picking his nose and trying to poke his eyes out, so they should have known then what I'd end up doing!''

By the age of 11, she was already too tall to dance professionally but continued her training in ballet, tap and stage dancing and eventually qualified as a teacher. That discipline stood her in good stead in a variety of sports she represented British colleges in hockey, basketball and athletics, including sprints, heptathlon and all the field events but a light-hearted charity rugby game changed her life.

``It was incredibly exhilarating,'' Burns said. ``I love running with the ball in my hands and suddenly realised I'd found the ideal game for me. From then on, my feet hardly touched the ground. I joined the Liverpool Poly side and scored two tries in my first match, then was invited to a North trial four weeks later to give me experience.''

``I went along, scored again and, to my amazement, found myself in the squad. I'd played so much sport and also watched a lot of rugby so it seemed to come to me pretty easily. At the time, England was short of big, strong, fast natural athletes and, after going on the next national training camp, I was picked for the match against Sweden just a year from the day I started playing. We won 40-0 on my local ground, Waterloo, and I've played every match since then.''

Burns believes that ballet, despite its image of delicate fragility, proved the perfect foundation for rugby and, certainly, during the World Cup training camp at St Albans, the statuesque figure with a long flying plait soared effortlessly in the lineouts, hanging in the air above leaping team-mates to clutch the ball. Her balanced running and deceptive changes of pace and direction also marked her out as an outstanding all-rounder.

For Burns and the rest of the side, the high point of their careers was their aggressive victory against France at Cardiff Arms Park in the semi-final of the first World Cup. In the final, they lost to the United States 19-6 but, after beating the Americans convincingly during the Canada Cup in Toronto last year, the players are confident this will be their year.

All are bristling with fitness after a training schedule that includes around two hours of running, weights and circuit training a day, regular practice games, drills and work with a sports psychologist.

The toughest part of the build-up has been trying to raise the Pounds 1,000 each player needs for kit, travelling and accommodation to compete in the unsponsored World Cup, which Scotland took over in December after Holland, the original hosts, had to pull out after funding problems. Several of the England players are taking out bank loans in order to compete.

Steve Peters, a former student international, now coaches the side and is impressed by the skills and commitment on show. ``It's so refreshing to be working with top-class women after coaching blase men's and colts' sides,'' he said. ``They're so keen to learn. You need a different approach because some tend to take instructions as criticism and are slightly lacking in confidence.''

Burns identified another problem. ``We've also had to learn to be pretty tough about coping with teasing and prejudice,'' he said. ``You get used to these male chauvinist comments, like `It's terrible women playing rugby they'll bang their breasts and damage their child-bearing parts for life'.

``In fact, comparatively, we're just as strong as men as it's women playing against women and we're certainly capable of the same commitment and technical skills as men. When people say it's a men's sport, we say: `No it's not, it's a great game for everyone.'''

Copyright (C) The Times, 1994

Source Citation
"Burns holds centre stage for England; Women's Rugby Union." Times [London, England] 13 Apr. 1994

Wales v England: feature

William Greaves

In three hours they would be striding out on to the hallowed ground of Cardiff Arms Park, the ancestral home of Welsh rugby where Gareth Edwards and J.P.R. Williams once reigned supreme. But now the track-suited forwards were sitting, lounging and crouching on and around the double bed of room 213 at the city's Angel Hotel, listening to coach Jonathan Moore telling them what to expect from the much-vaunted English pack.

``When they're in our 22 they'll attack off the back row and look to work a switch with the centres, so watch the blind side,'' he said, in a jargon which was instantly understood by an audience of thoughtfully nodding heads. ``If the back row start running it's your job, Bess, to get out there tackling...''

From the corner, Belinda Davies, a 29-year-old sales manager from Llandrindod Wells, felt moved to offer her view of her opposing prop forward, Sandy Ewing: ``She's happy when she's allowed to look good running around the park but give her a bad time in the scrum and she's knackered.''

The tension eased. This was fighting talk and just the kind of thing 25-year-old Bess Evans, hooker, vice-captain and chairman of the Welsh Women's Rugby Football Union, needed to hear to quell the big match nerves which had kept her awake for most of the night.

As the host organiser of the sixth clash between the women of Wales and England, she knew better than anybody the significance of the next few hours. This was much more than a game of rugger. It was the day when the audience response would determine whether her sex had really made its mark on the most intimately physical of all outdoor team sports.

I had come, full of joy and rich in mixed metaphor, to watch jolly hockey sticks replacing the blood and bruises of the real thing.

There would never be a better chance to challenge such chauvinist prejudices. Although their first club sides date back to the late 1970s and the Women's Rugby Football Union (WRFU) was formed nine years ago, last Sunday was the first time they had been allowed to use a national stadium for a home international match.

And if that were not milestone enough, the game was to be refereed by Derek Bevan, who took charge of last year's World Cup final in which Australia and England could have filled Twickenham many times over.

Would such an eloquent vote of confidence from one of the most respected officials of the men's game produce the kind of spectator attendance which was so desperately needed?

That all this was haunting the Welsh chairman's mind through those fitful hours of darkness was confirmed first thing on the morning of battle by her roommate Tania Wear, a 26-year-old engineering undergraduate, loose head prop forward and new cap. ``Every time I rolled over, I was aware of Bess lying there wide awake, staring at the ceiling,'' she said.

Miss Evans, an athletic and irrepressibly cheerful postgraduate student of the University of Wales, where she is studying for an M.Phil in sports physiology, agreed that it had been a disastrous night. ``The trouble was that I was wearing two hats. As a player I badly want to beat England but I'm also concerned that the whole day is a success. Because we are playing at the Arms Park, I thought it was important to keep up the stature of the occasion by booking the two teams into good hotels nearby. The Welsh Rugby Union gave us the ground but we have to pay for the security stewards and although both the Grand and the Angel hotels have generously given me time to settle their accounts, I'll be in big trouble if we don't get enough through the turnstiles.''

With 130 club sides but no major sponsor, women's rugby is both the fastest-growing team sport in Britain (according to the Sports Council) and a shoestring survivor. That one of its star players should have to lift her eyes from the scrum and anxiously count the paying punters comes as no surprise to Karen Almond, a PE teacher from Hertfordshire who is the England visitors' captain, fly half and a veteran of 20 internationals. ``We've always had to pay for our own travel and hotels and we even have to buy our shirts and socks out of our own pocket,'' she said without a hint of complaint. ``We had our own world cup competition last year and England lost to the US in the final. We'd love to go over there to play a return but it's an awfully long way away.''

By 6.30am, Miss Evans gave up the unequal struggle against insomnia, got dressed and went out to pace the Cardiff pavements. Three hours later she joined her teammates for a carbohydrate breakfast of pasta and a lemon and lime energy drink which Carol Thomas, a wing forward with eight previous caps but today one of the replacements on the bench, said tasted much better with vodka in it. Everyone laughed a bit too loudly. Badinage was clearly an approved antidote to ever-tightening nerves.

Afterwards in room 102 ``just give me five minutes to tidy away yesterday's knickers'' (more laughter and several ribald comments) Miss Evans laid newspaper on the bed to get down to the chore of boot-cleaning. ``I never had any feminist ambition to knock down barriers,'' she said. ``I was introduced to the game at college and wanted to play it because unlike hockey and netball it was a young, growing sport and I suppose the physical contact side of it appealed to me, too.''

With an hour to go before kick-off, both teams were changed and out on the turf for team pictures. Edginess was everywhere as each player found her own method to calm a pounding heart. Miss Wear looked up at the empty stands. ``You can almost feel them filled with people, can't you?'' she said. ``It's a dream come true. At college a lot of the boys talk about one day playing at Cardiff Arms Park well I've beaten them too it.''

The crowd, including guests, built up to about 3,000 and the all-important turnstile receipts to Pounds 6,500 ``certainly enough to cover the hotel and security bills'', said a much relieved Miss Evans afterwards. If it was not exactly the capacity 53,000 that would have graced the comparable men's international clash, by the time the band had played the national anthems, there was no shortage of partisan clamour.

And within about 20 minutes at least one male spectator was aware of a strange attitude conversion. England's fleet-footed Deborah Francis had gone over for a try in the corner; at the other end Welsh flanker Jackie Morgan had taken advantage of an appalling defensive mix-up to touch down the equalising points; the crowd, equally divided in allegiance, bayed its encouragement and the field was no longer full of women but of rugby players locked in mighty conflict.

The game ebbed and flowed with Miss Almond and her opposing Welsh fly-half, Samantha Porter, exchanging a couple of penalty goals each. A lengthy period of English pressure in the last half hour brought a spectacular try from full-back Jane Mitchell and a winning margin of 14-10.

Back at the hotel, Rosie Golby, a player herself and the secretary of the WRFU, laughed at my reaction. ``That's what nearly everyone says when they watch for the first time that they soon forget that we are women,'' she said.

Last to arrive at the reception was Miss Evans delayed by having two stitches in a badly cut lip.

`I went in to tackle Jill Burns, the English No8, and her head popped up and caught me,'' she said philosophically. ``It doesn't look very pretty and I'm afraid it's ruined my chances for tonight.''

Her mother, Jean Evans, put a consoling arm around her. ``She's had black eyes, terrible bruises and one broken leg and I always seem to end up taking her to hospital,'' she said.

``But I never worry. Our whole household is given over to women's rugby and she's doing what she wants to do.''

Copyright (C) The Times, 1992

Source Citation
"Hard tackles on a shoestring; Life and Times." Times [London, England] 12 Feb. 1992

World Cup: preview

Gareth Daniels predicts that women's rugby is about to win over the chauvinists.

``A WOMAN'S rugby playing,'' Dr Johnson might have observed, ``is like a dog walking on its hinder legs. It is not done well but you are surprised to find it done at all.''

No doubt 90 per cent of the male population of any rugby club would agree. For them, netball, hockey, lacrosse, even soccer, are OK for women, but rugby is a man's game.

Women's rugby gets a chance to kick views like that into touch next weekend, and for the seven days following. The inaugural women's World Cup begins on Saturday, with all games played in Wales.

Alice Cooper, the World Cup press officer, reckons that those chauvinists who come to scoff will remain to cheer after 10 minutes. ``It takes that long for men to realise that we are serious,'' she said. ``They come in with a lot of misconceptions. They soon see things differently.''

John Scott, a former England captain and manager of Cardiff RFC, a man not noted for diplomacy when talking about men's rugby, is an unlikely supporter. Women players, he suggests, have a lot of skill: ``And they train harder than many men. Their fitness level is superb.''

Scott insists that he is not one of those who casually dismisses women's rugby as some sort of aberration: ``If they want to play, let them.''

They will play, don't worry. Sides from countries around the world are showing the sort of amateur dedication hard to match in these pay-for-play days. Girls from as far away as the Soviet Union, New Zealand, Canada, America and Japan are paying their own way over, and will even fork out for accommodation during their stay in Wales.

This is because the ambitious plan to raise Pounds 100,000 in sponsorship fell a bit short of the target by around Pounds 95,000. But it is hoped, observed Cooper, who cannot say what the total cost will be, that gate money and programme proceeds will help.

The idea for a women's World Cup was born after the European Cup three years ago. Other countries like New Zealand and Canada asked: ``Can we come to the next one?'' and the answer of course was yes, turning it into a world event. And because the women were not allowed to play the big matches at Twickenham, Wales got the nod, with the Cardiff ground providing the venue for the semi-finals and final.

Meanwhile, Cooper said, the WRU were wonderful, and various local authorities and the Welsh Sports Council have been ``most supportive''. South Glamorgan County Council, in fact, is putting on a gala dinner after the April 14 final.

The preliminary rounds will be played next Saturday, although the decision to play the WRU Cup semi-finals the next day have squashed the plan to have a couple as curtain-raisers to the big games.

The top four teams go through to the semi-finals to be played on Friday week, with the final two days later.

Last week England beat Wales for the fifth time, but the host nation is not without hope. ``We've got a great pack,'' the team manager Dawn Barnett said. ``But we have to put it together behind.'' Then she said, ominously: ``Like New Zealand. They are so quick behind the scrum.''

New Zealand as ever, it seems, are the danger. The Japanese, with a couple of 4ft 9in players, will not be much of a threat in the lineout.

A dozen countries are involved and the post-game celebrations will be up to the sternest male standards. Even those legendary rugby songs? ``You name it,'' say the players, ``and we'll sing it.'' There could be room for women's rugby after all.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 1991

Source Citation
"Women's World Cup finds a welcome in Wales; Rugby Union." Sunday Times [London, England] 31 Mar. 1991.

Plenty of impact but no punch - Women's Regional Championship, South-east 8, Midlands and North Thames 8.

MICHAEL HENDERSON

LONDON escaped the worst of the early winter blizzards but it was still parky enough yesterday to discourage thought of outdoor pursuits. At Wasps, however, two sets of rugby players supplied their own riposte to the mardy: faint hearts never achieved a thing.

No less than the men, England's women players can achieve an awful lot next year. World Cups beckon both and if the women's competition is the less regarded, to the point of ignorance among the larger sporting public, the practitioners of a growing code feel they too can leave their thumb print on 1991.

Sudbury yesterday saw a regional set-to between the the South-east and the Midlands and North Thames. Twice the South-east (chiefly Richmond) went ahead with tries; twice the North Thames side (mainly Wasps) levelled the score. From the comfort of the clubhouse there seemed to be as they say in the men's game no quarter asked nor given.

What immediately strikes the observer about women's rugby is ahem how much more gentlemanly it is. Obviously the women cannot run as fast, pass as far, or kick as long. Neither do they show any inclination to punch as hard. There were apologies in the bar afterwards, and even apologies on the pitch during the game.

'The Women's RFU have always had a strong philosophy on violence,' said Karen Almond, the Wasps' fly-half and Great Britain captain, who missed the game through injury. 'We try to play it hard but fair.' Indeed, the solitary fall from grace yesterday was a head-high tackle by the South's Pat Harris.

The Hull-born Almond, who supported the rugby league team of that name in her youth, helped to get the women's section at Wasps off the ground in 1984 with three friends from Loughborough University, where they had all completed physical-education courses. There are now 91 women's teams in England and Wales and a further nine in Scotland, eight of them at universities.

Like her peers, the British captain believes the World Cup is a boon, just the thing to amend some perceptions of women's rugby. 'Some men are very supportive, most women's teams are coached by them. But you can find a chauvinist attitude that women should be in the kitchen, not out playing.

'We are breaking it down bit by bit. I have played in quite a few curtain-raisers before tournaments and you can hear men in the crowd changing their minds during the game as they see we can actually tackle.'

Nine countries, including Sweden, the United States, Japan, Spain and Canada, will definitely participate in the World Cup, to be staged in Wales next spring with the final at Cardiff on April 14. Another three France, New Zealand, and the Soviet Union have yet to confirm.

Midlands and North Thames: Davies; Turner, Ewing, Smith, Stirrup; Ross, Briddon; Burgess, Mitchell, Bennett, O'Kelly, Williets, Robson, Stennett, Harding.

South-east: Bond; Thomas, John, Cooper, Chambers; Isherwood, Edwards; Harrington, Mills, Prangnall, Francis, Gurney, Harris, McMahon, Davies.

Source Citation
"Rugby Union: Plenty of impact but no punch - Women's Regional Championship, South-east 8, Midlands and North Thames 8." Guardian [London, England] 10 Dec. 1990:

Breaking clear of the Cinderella image

Chris Thau charts the popularity of women's rugby and the steps it is taking to win even more friends

England's 40-0 victory over Sweden in Waterloo at the weekend was another landmark in the short history of the women's game in Europe.

The women's international, sponsored by Chelsfield plc, was part of an international schedule agreed at a preliminary meeting of the representatives from European countries last April.

The meeting, attended by delegates from Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain has decided to form an international women's confederation similar to the International Rugby Board to coordinate and promote the women's game worldwide. The first meeting of the newly-formed body is scheduled for this month in Paris.

The conference was organized during the first European women's cup in Bourg-en-Bresse in France. French women beat Great Britain 8-6 in a closely fought contest to win the first tournament. France is the leading European nation, but both the US and Canada have strong teams and they would be expected to join the WIRB.

One of the first decisions of the WIRB was to organize a second European tournament in England in 1991, the year of the men's second world cup. Naturally the glamour and the media build-up surrounding the senior event would help the publicity of the women's game.

The French have about 30 clubs organized since 1972 on a league system. The French women's federation is affiliated to the FFR and is recognized by the French sports ministry, therefore receiving a subsidy from the Government.

During the last five years the women's game has soared in popularity in Britain. There are more than 60 teams, mainly in England and Wales, and the league structure has operated since 1985.

A five-year development plan has been devised to increase the number of players, raise the playing standards and encourage more women, former players to become involved in administration, refereeing and coaching. The plan is to be submitted to the Sports Council by the new WRFU coaching and development officer, Carol Isherwood.

Until last season, Miss Isherwood was both the secretary of the WRFU and, as a tireless loose forward, the captain of both England and Great Britain.

Sidelined by injury, she has been replaced by Wales's Carolyn Mann as the WRFU secretary and by Karen Almond as the England captain repectively. Karen Almond, a product of Loughborough University, the cradle of women's rugby in Britain, is a gifted stand off half and she was the leading try scorer in the game against Sweden with 16 points (two tries and four conversions).

Miss Almond, a PE teacher in Potters Bar, near London, cherished the occasion though according to her, she never regarded herself as a natural leader.

She believes that women's rugby is still facing an uphill struggle in its attempt to establish itself and cut through prejudice and preconceived ideas.

``It will take a long time before the women's game will lose its present image as a kind of Cinderella sport,'' Miss Almond said.

``But every time we play somewhere new we make new inroads.

``A lot of the men spectators at Waterloo never saw women play before. To their credit, they were full of praise after the game. Even the president of the Waterloo Rugby Club was heard saying that he would support the formation of a women team within the club. I have to admit that we encountered the same reluctance from ordinary members when we joined Wasps. However, nowadays we are accepted as just another team of the club.''

Source Citation
"Breaking clear of the Cinderella image; Women's rugby." Times [London, England] 18 Oct. 1988.

Feature: Leaving the touchline for the glory of the scrum

The Times, Wednesday, Apr 10, 1985