Women’s Rugby World Cup – Blog Update No. 2

This World Cup has been an amazing experience. The 26 of us in the squad are incredibly close and spending all this time together at the world cup has brought us even closer. Some of my best friends are in the squad and sharing this experience with them has made us even better friends. That’s what I love about playing rugby – not just getting to play, both for your club and for your country, but making lifelong friendships.

Those friends are there on and off the pitch. We all supported each other when we played Australia. It was a tough game, but we all played some fantastic rugby. We scored two tries and didn’t concede any points. The game didn’t kick off until 8.15pm so we had a very long day. We had the morning off which was nice and after that we were monitored by our medical team to check that we were hydrated, what our weight was and to make sure we’d slept ok. This is typical preparation on a match day, especially with a late kick-off.

Later on in the day we did a team run to keep our legs fresh. This is important as after a long day of waiting around the legs can get heavy. The team run is always good fun and not too serious. It’s good to chuck a ball about and most of our team runs in this World Cup have been in the sunshine which is great.

After the team run we split into forwards and backs and each have our own meetings. I’m in the backs and at our meeting we go over the moves we’re planning on doing in the game. Then we all meet up and have a full team meeting. At each team meeting in this World Cup we’ve watched a motivational video that Dave, our video analyst has put together. It’s different every time. Dave uses clips from previous games and puts them together with music. It’s incredibly inspirational. After the meeting it’s time to get changed, do our pre-match warm-up and then head out on the pitch and play!

The World Cup has been an intense experience. When I’m training and playing I have my game face on but during my down-time I switch off completely. It’s very important to do this and this is where having friends in the squad helps. I’ve gone into Guildford with the girls to indulge in some retail therapy which I love and we’ve hung out in our rooms and watched DVDs and just generally gossiped! I also like meeting up with family and friends outside of rugby for a spot of lunch or a coffee. And I’ve even taken to cleaning my room.

This World Cup has highlighted that women can play rugby at a high level and we’ve attracted many new fans to the game. Before the world cup there were people who didn’t know much about us but seeing us play in our Nike kit has made them automatically recognise us as we’re in the same kit as the men. Getting to play and train in such great kit has been fantastic. We played our pool game against Kazakhstan in the purple away kit for the very first time and we got huge positive feedback from our fans about that.

We have done such an amazing job getting to the world cup final and I hope we’ve inspired young girls to start playing rugby. It’s a sport for all and this World Cup has really promoted that. If you’re small, tall, fast or powerful or if you just like going out and playing sport then rugby is the game for you. Hopefully many more fans will tune into the final and see just how amazing women’s rugby is. And hopefully England will come away victorious!