SALLY JONES
WHEN the England women's rugby side run out for their international against Holland at Wasps next Sunday they will be desperate not just to win, but to win in the sort of style that will make Jeff Probyn eat his words.
After a student suffered a neck injury, which did not prove serious, in a recent women's club match the former England prop and several other members of the establishment's macho brigade declared that rugby was too rough a game for women and implied that female players were a pack of harridans with broken noses and cauliflower ears.
The comments provoked an uproar, with howls of outrage or derision from most of Britain's 5,000 women players, particularly those who took part in England's splendid World Cup final victory against the United States in April. Even the unreconstructed chauvinists of the men's game began, in public at least, to duck below the parapet.
Probyn agreed to hold a somewhat tongue-in-cheek coaching session, televised by the BBC's Rugby Special, for the women's squad at Richmond Rugby Club, which boasts the biggest female section in the world. Much of the programme's obligatory joshing was for once at the expense of Probyn himself rather than the women's game.
Watching the powerful Richmond first team, who are unbeaten in the National League this season, on a wet, freezing night, rucking and mauling under floodlights, the sheer commitment and technical skills were striking.
For two of the players, Deirdre Mills at fly-half and the flanker, Jenny Chambers, there was an extra incentive as they will be on England duty next week.
Mills, 31, a stalwart of the game and a fine all-round athlete, became hooked on rugby in the last year of her degree at University College, London. She spent 10 years in the international shadows as the understudy to Karen Almond before gaining her first cap this year in England's World Cup victory over Russia. She then made her name as a place-kicker with a handful of fine conversions and a memorable long-range penalty in the match against Scotland, to the delight of the 5,000-strong crowd.
As one of a string of newcomers, Mills, a softly spoken accountant with the Birmingham Midshires Building Society, is keen to build on her growing reputation. 'It's moments like the big kick against Scotland that stay with you,' she says. 'I remember placing the ball five yards inside the touchline on the wrong side for me (she's a right-footed kicker), looking up and thinking 'Wow, that looks a helluva long way'. Then I stepped up and went boof and it was there. The team went wild because we all knew that the match against Scotland was going to be tough.'
Her kicking prowess is a legacy of childhood. 'I've got three brothers and I was always kicking a ball around with them as a child, so it's second nature really,' she says.
'These days I spend a lot of time practising place-kicking on the two evenings a week that I train with Richmond, then there's all the weights, circuits and treadmill-running at the gym on the other nights, so it's a pretty big commitment.
'The game's great, though. I love the rough and tumble of it and how as fly-half I have a huge influence on adapting our tactics to outwit different opponents. We're well trained and pit players of equal strength against each other, so I don't see why anyone should try to stop us playing. Life itself can be dangerous. In fact, it's generally fatal! I think the Probyn comments were just a cheap publicity stunt and ironically the women's game has benefited from all the coverage they got.'
Jenny Chambers, 32, a former army officer in charge of PTI training, is equally bullish about the future of women's rugby, despite Probyn's jibes. 'Since I started playing six years ago,' she says, 'the game's mushroomed incredibly with over 200 clubs and growing numbers of teenagers and young women taking it up. At the top level, the game is tactically and technically virtually as good as the men's, although there's still a lot of prejudice to overcome. I had to wait until I left the army to play it because it had a big image problem with my superior officers, who nearly fainted when I suggested starting an army side.'
However, by the end of her first practice session Chambers, who now runs a leisure centre near Heathrow, was a rugby addict and began training every day. At 5ft 9in and 10st 10lb, Chambers admits she is light for a flanker, but with her pace and abundant natural talent, she has improved rapidly. She gained her first cap last year and was on the bench for the World Cup final, coming on early in the match to play as a replacement lock for an injured team-mate.
'It sounds arrogant to say it,' she says, 'but at the final whistle, I just felt utter relief. I knew we ought to win the match after all the work we'd done on skills and tactics over the previous three years, but it was wonderful to fulfil that dream. After that performance and all the media coverage it got, we suddenly found we were being taken a lot more seriously and even the Probyn comments have worked in our favour.'
Chambers, who is a qualified coach, was unimpressed by the session Probyn took, believing it was designed to humiliate rather than instruct.
'His first drill was chip-kicking a tackle bag, tackling the bag then recovering the ball from beyond it. It was a bit chaotic, but any sensible coach would have started a session with basic warm-up skills and I think the only reason he chose such a complicated manoeuvre was to make us look inept.
'He also taught our forwards how to pull the opposing prop's elbow down to prevent her seeing the ball as it's put into the scrum. He wouldn't admit it, but that's a dangerous manoeuvre that could cause the scrum to collapse. It's also bending the laws of rugby and if I'd been there I'd have protested.
'Sadly his attitude is typical of a lot of the top male players, although there are honourable exceptions like Rory Underwood and Brian Moore who's coached us and is incredibly supportive. We don't need anyone's approval to take part, though. We'll be going out against Holland to play our own brand of fluent, attractive rugby. I'm convinced we'll win and win well.'
Source Citation
"Rugby Union: Sisters who pack a heavy punch - Sally Jones finds England's women on a forward roll as they prepare to meet Holland." Observer [London, England] 11 Dec. 1994
Showing posts with label Injury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Injury. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 December 1994
Monday, 28 November 1994
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
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
Thursday, 24 November 1994
Woman badly hurt in rugby match; Portsmouth University
Lucy Berrington
A WOMAN rugby player was in hospital with severe spinal injuries yesterday after a scrum collapsed on her.
It is the most serious accident since women's rugby took off in Britain three years ago and raises fresh questions about the safety of one of the fastest-growing women's sports in the country. The 20-year-old student from Portsmouth University women's team was injured during a home match against Worthing Ladies on Sunday.
The game was abandoned when players realised that the woman was badly injured. She was taken to the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth, then flown in a coastguard helicopter to the Odstock Spinal Injuries Unit in Salisbury.
A spokesman for Portsmouth University said: ``She was trapped underneath the scrum and it became apparent she had been badly hurt.''
Yesterday the woman's condition was said to be stable. The university spokesman said that the player's neck was injured but not thought to be broken and another bone had fractured.
The accident has revived controversy over the spread of women's rugby, the popularity of which was boosted by England's win in the world rugby union championship for women, held in Edinburgh in April.
Jeff Probyn, the former England international who recently caused a furore when he said that the game was too physical for women, said yesterday: ``I'm not sexist but it's confirmed the fear that I voiced that at some point a woman would get injured. The more people that play, the less technically competent they are and the more likely to be injured.''
Copyright (C) The Times, 1994
Source Citation
"Woman badly hurt in rugby match; Portsmouth University." Times [London, England] 22 Nov. 1994
A WOMAN rugby player was in hospital with severe spinal injuries yesterday after a scrum collapsed on her.
It is the most serious accident since women's rugby took off in Britain three years ago and raises fresh questions about the safety of one of the fastest-growing women's sports in the country. The 20-year-old student from Portsmouth University women's team was injured during a home match against Worthing Ladies on Sunday.
The game was abandoned when players realised that the woman was badly injured. She was taken to the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth, then flown in a coastguard helicopter to the Odstock Spinal Injuries Unit in Salisbury.
A spokesman for Portsmouth University said: ``She was trapped underneath the scrum and it became apparent she had been badly hurt.''
Yesterday the woman's condition was said to be stable. The university spokesman said that the player's neck was injured but not thought to be broken and another bone had fractured.
The accident has revived controversy over the spread of women's rugby, the popularity of which was boosted by England's win in the world rugby union championship for women, held in Edinburgh in April.
Jeff Probyn, the former England international who recently caused a furore when he said that the game was too physical for women, said yesterday: ``I'm not sexist but it's confirmed the fear that I voiced that at some point a woman would get injured. The more people that play, the less technically competent they are and the more likely to be injured.''
Copyright (C) The Times, 1994
Source Citation
"Woman badly hurt in rugby match; Portsmouth University." Times [London, England] 22 Nov. 1994
Sunday, 13 November 1994
Prejudice: Jeff Probyn
ENGLISH women's rugby union has come a long way since an after-dinner speaker at London Irish said they could do with more players who look like Farrah Fawcett-Majors and play like Wade Dooley instead of the other way round. Victory in 24 of their 25 international matches should surely have convinced the England team's male counterparts of the validity of the women's game? Sadly not.
On a BBC Rugby Special programme broadcast last month, the England prop Jeff Probyn criticised their appearance and told 1.5m viewers he was not in favour of women playing from any point of view.
The women's First Division leaders, Richmond, invited Probyn to a training session in an attempt to change his mind. After two and a half hours in the mud and rain, Probyn said: ``I still don't think they should play. Girls with cauliflower ears aren't attractive and the risk of lower-abdomen injury can't be good for them in terms of having babies.''
In fact, there was a distinct lack of cauliflower ears among the women on the field but if, as Probyn believes, looks are important perhaps he should take a look in the mirror.
Source Citation
"Fouroux told to send in the clowns; Inside Track." Sunday Times [London, England] 13 Nov. 1994
On a BBC Rugby Special programme broadcast last month, the England prop Jeff Probyn criticised their appearance and told 1.5m viewers he was not in favour of women playing from any point of view.
The women's First Division leaders, Richmond, invited Probyn to a training session in an attempt to change his mind. After two and a half hours in the mud and rain, Probyn said: ``I still don't think they should play. Girls with cauliflower ears aren't attractive and the risk of lower-abdomen injury can't be good for them in terms of having babies.''
In fact, there was a distinct lack of cauliflower ears among the women on the field but if, as Probyn believes, looks are important perhaps he should take a look in the mirror.
Source Citation
"Fouroux told to send in the clowns; Inside Track." Sunday Times [London, England] 13 Nov. 1994
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