Talking Rugby

More Than a Policy

Every rugby club has a culture, whether it has consciously tried to create one or not.

It is there in the way a new player is welcomed on their first training night, in the language used in the changing room and in the confidence someone feels when they walk through the clubhouse door for the first time. It is there in the way coaches speak to players, the way teammates look after one another and the way volunteers make people feel that they are part of something rather than simply passing through it.

Culture is not something that exists only in a club's constitution or on a noticeboard. It is created, often quietly, by the people who make up the club.

That makes the RFU's new Way of the Rose vision particularly interesting. Announced in August 2026, the plan sets out the RFU's ambition to realise the social inclusion and environmental potential of rugby in England, with community clubs central to that ambition. The intention is not simply to grow the game, but to help create the conditions in which clubs can continue to thrive and have a positive impact on the communities around them.

It is an important distinction.

Growing participation is relatively easy to describe. Getting more people through the gate, more children into schools programmes or more players registered with clubs gives us numbers that can be measured. But numbers only tell part of the story. The more difficult question is what happens once somebody arrives.

Do they feel welcome?

Do they feel that the club is somewhere they can belong?

And, perhaps most importantly, do they have a reason to come back?‍

Those questions matter because rugby clubs are more than places where matches are played. They are social spaces, community organisations and, for many people, an important part of their identity. A club can provide friendship, confidence, routine and a sense of belonging that extends well beyond the pitch.

That is why inclusion cannot simply mean opening the door.

The door has to feel genuinely open.

A player who is invited to join a training session but spends the evening feeling like an outsider has technically been included, but the experience may tell them something very different. Equally, a club can have all the right policies in place and still have a culture that makes some people reluctant to return.

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This is where the difference between policy and culture becomes important.

Policies have a purpose. They establish expectations, give people a framework to work within and provide clubs with guidance on issues that matter. The RFU's approach recognises that community clubs need resources and support if they are going to create the strongest possible foundations for future growth.‍

But a policy cannot greet a new player at the door.

It cannot notice that someone is standing on their own after training.‍

It cannot decide whether a joke has gone too far, whether a new volunteer feels valued or whether a player who has never played rugby before feels confident enough to come back next week.

People do that.‍

And that is where the everyday culture of a club becomes so important.

The most meaningful changes are often the least visible. They happen when an experienced player takes the time to explain something rather than assuming everyone already understands it. They happen when a coach creates an environment in which questions are encouraged rather than dismissed. They happen when volunteers recognise that the person making the tea, running the junior section or helping behind the scenes is just as much part of the club as the players on the pitch.‍

None of those moments are likely to make a national headline.

Collectively, however, they determine what a rugby club feels like.

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There is also a wider question about who gets to see themselves in rugby's future. Women's rugby has demonstrated what can happen when opportunities are created and people are given the chance to participate, develop and lead. The progress of the women's game has not happened because of one decision or one strategy. It has been built by thousands of people creating teams, coaching players, volunteering, organising competitions and encouraging the next person to get involved.

That same principle applies across the game.

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If rugby is serious about becoming more inclusive, responsibility cannot sit entirely with the RFU or with individual club committees. The governing body can provide the framework and the resources, but the experience of rugby is ultimately created at ground level.

It is created on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings.‍

It is created by coaches, players, parents, volunteers and supporters.

And it is created in all those small interactions that rarely appear in a strategy document but which can make the difference between someone deciding that rugby is not for them and deciding that they have finally found somewhere they belong.

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Perhaps that is the real test of the Way of the Rose over the years ahead.

Not simply how many plans are published, how many initiatives are launched or how many targets are reached, important though those measures may be.‍

The more meaningful measure may be much simpler.

Someone walks into a rugby club for the first time.‍

They look around.

They meet some people.‍

They give it a try.

And when they leave, they are already thinking about coming back.

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Because ultimately, an inclusive rugby club is not one that simply tells people they are welcome.

It is one that makes them feel it.




FIND OUT MORE:‍

The RFU's Way of the Rose sets out its vision for a more inclusive and sustainable future for rugby in England.

Explore The Way of the Rose →

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Dear Gilbert

Questions, dilemmas and occasional rugby-related chaos

Gilbert reads every letter — probably.

The letters. The advice. Make of it what you will..

• Celebrating against your old club

  Dear Gilbert — I scored against my old club and celebrated. Now I feel guilty. Was that rude?
  — Still Not Over It in Kent

  G says:
  No.

  You scored a try. You did not declare war.

  Your old club will survive. Your former teammates will survive. Their WhatsApp group, however, may need a little time.

  If they wanted you to be more restrained, they shouldn't have let you score.

  Celebrate the try. Shake hands afterwards.

  And don't apologise.

  — G

• Not understanding training shouts

  Dear Gilbert — I don't understand half the things people shout at training. I've been nodding and hoping for the best. Should I admit it?
  — Lost in Lancashire

  G says:
  Absolutely not.

  You've made it six months without anyone noticing. That's not failure. That's technique.

  The important thing is to look busy when everyone else looks busy.

  If someone shouts something you don't understand, run towards the nearest group and look determined.

  Eventually you'll work it out.

  Or you won't.

  Either way, stop nodding.

  It makes you look suspicious.

  — G

• Loving rugby but hating running

  Dear Gilbert — I love rugby but hate running. Have I made a terrible career choice?
  — More Scrum Than Sprint in Sussex

  G says:
  Possibly.

  Rugby does contain a surprising amount of running for a sport that also involves lying on the floor.

  The good news is that nobody actually enjoys running.

  They simply enjoy being the person who doesn't have to run quite as far as everyone else.

  Find your position. Learn where to stand. Make your tackles count.

  And if anyone suggests extra fitness work, suddenly become very good at helping with the kit.

  — G

Talking Rugby

What Does Success at the Top Mean for the Rest of the Game?

“Professional rugby gives young players heroes. Grassroots rugby gives them somewhere to become one.”

---

Women's rugby has every reason to celebrate.

The continued investment in the elite game is a sign of how far the sport has come. Better contracts, improved facilities, growing crowds and increased visibility are all positive steps. For the players reaching the very top of the game, these changes are long overdue.

The success of the Red Roses has inspired a generation, while Premiership Women's Rugby continues to raise standards on and off the pitch.

But every significant step forward also raises an important question.

What does success at the top actually mean for the rest of the game?

Because every international player, every league champion and every future star starts in exactly the same place.

A local rugby club.

Long before there are television cameras, professional contracts or sold-out stadiums, there are floodlit training sessions on cold Tuesday evenings. Volunteers marking pitches before work. Coaches giving up evenings with their families. Committee members balancing budgets, organising fixtures and trying to make every new player feel welcome.

Without those people, there is no pathway to the top.

The relationship between elite rugby and grassroots rugby shouldn't be viewed as separate worlds. One depends entirely on the other.

When investment reaches the professional game, the hope is that its impact extends much further than the players wearing England shirts. Increased visibility can attract new players. Success can inspire young girls to pick up a rugby ball for the first time. Commercial growth can create opportunities that simply didn't exist a decade ago.

But inspiration is only the beginning.

Every player motivated by what they see on television eventually arrives at a local club looking for somewhere to belong.

The question is whether those clubs have the people, facilities and support they need to welcome them..

---

Where We Go From Here

The investment announced this summer deserves to be recognised for what it is: a significant step forward for women's rugby in England.

But the real measure of its success won't simply be bigger contracts, larger crowds or higher television audiences.

It will be whether more clubs are thriving rather than surviving.

Whether volunteers feel supported rather than stretched.

Whether coaches have the confidence and resources to keep players in the game.

Whether every girl inspired by the Red Roses can find a welcoming team close to home.

The healthiest game isn't one where only the top flourishes.

It's one where every level grows together.

If, in four years' time, we have a stronger Red Roses team and stronger grassroots clubs, then this investment won't just have transformed elite rugby.

It will have strengthened the game from the ground up.

And that's the future we'd love to see..

---

The Four Women Who Started a Revolution

Long before sold-out stadiums, television deals and professional contracts, four volunteers quietly changed the course of women's rugby forever.

There are moments in sport that, looking back, feel inevitable.

Looking back, it's easy to believe they were always going to happen.

Professional leagues.

International tournaments.

World Cups.

History has a habit of making progress look effortless.

It rarely is.

Because every great sporting event begins with somebody looking at an impossible idea and deciding to try anyway.

In 1991, four women did exactly that.

Their names were Deborah Griffin, Sue Dorrington, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth.

Outside rugby circles, many people have never heard of them.

Yet without their determination, there may never have been a Women's Rugby World Cup as we know it today

“History remembers the tournament. It should also remember the four volunteers who made it possible.”

---

At the end of the 1980s, women's rugby was growing steadily, but opportunities remained limited. International fixtures were rare, funding was scarce and official


recognition varied enormously from country to country. The idea of staging a global tournament seemed ambitious, perhaps even unrealistic.

From their base at Richmond Women's Rugby Club, however, Deborah Griffin, Sue Dorrington, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth believed something very simple.

If the men's game could have a World Cup...

...why couldn't the women's game?

There was no blueprint.

No commercial investment.

No governing body leading the project.

No guarantee that national unions would support the idea.

There was simply a belief that women's rugby deserved the same opportunity to compete on the world's biggest stage.

So they stopped waiting for somebody else to make it happen.

They started planning instead..

Today it's almost impossible to appreciate the scale of what they were attempting.

If four volunteers decided to organise an international tournament now, they would create a WhatsApp group before breakfast. Documents would be shared online. Video meetings would connect organisers across continents. Fixtures could be confirmed in minutes, while cloud storage, shared calendars and project management software would keep everyone moving in the same direction.

None of that existed.

Communication depended on letters, fax machines and carefully timed international telephone calls. Information travelled through the post. Documents were typed, copied and physically distributed. Every conversation required patience. Every amendment created more paperwork. Every unexpected problem meant starting the process all over again.

What feels like a few clicks today could take days—or even weeks.

Perhaps that's what makes their achievement so extraordinary.

They weren't simply organising a rugby tournament.

They were doing it in a world that lacked almost every communication tool we now take for granted.

“No WhatsApp. No shared documents. No cloud storage. Just determination, persistence and four volunteers who believed the tournament should exist.”

Of course, organising any major sporting event has never simply been about paperwork.

Teams had to be contacted.

Venues secured.

Accommodation arranged.

Sponsors persuaded.

Budgets balanced.

Problems solved.

Every task depended upon volunteers fitting the work around full-time jobs, family commitments and everyday life.

Nobody was being paid to build the future of women's rugby.

They simply believed it was worth doing. And because they did, women's rugby changed forever.

Perhaps that's the detail history sometimes overlooks.

The Women's Rugby World Cup wasn't created because somebody invested millions of pounds.

It existed because ordinary people kept saying yes to one more meeting.

One more phone call.

One more problem that needed solving.

That feels strangely familiar.

Anyone involved in a community rugby club today will recognise the pattern immediately.

The fixture secretary quietly rearranging postponed matches before work.

The coach locking up long after everyone else has gone home.

The committee member answering emails late into the evening because somebody has to.

Different jobs.

The same spirit.

When the inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup finally took place in Cardiff in 1991, something remarkable happened.

Not because a trophy was lifted.

Not because history was written in a single afternoon.

But because something that many believed couldn't happen...

...had happened.

A door had been opened.

Every Women's Rugby World Cup since has walked through it.

It's tempting to view progress as inevitable, as though the professional game we enjoy today was always destined to arrive.

It wasn't.

Progress happened because people chose to create opportunities instead of waiting for permission.

That may be the greatest legacy Deborah Griffin, Sue Dorrington, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth leave behind.

Issue 03 has celebrated the people who make rugby happen.

The volunteers who unlock the clubhouse before training.

The referees who give up their weekends because without them there is no match.

The committee members who quietly keep clubs alive.

The coaches who stay behind after training because one player wants ten more minutes practising kicks.

Deborah Griffin, Sue Dorrington, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth belonged to exactly that tradition.

They simply changed the game on a much bigger stage.

Technology has transformed rugby since 1991.

We organise fixtures through smartphones.

We communicate instantly.

We share documents with a tap of a screen.

The tools have changed beyond recognition.

The people haven't.

The game still depends on individuals prepared to organise, encourage, persuade and quietly keep everything moving behind the scenes.

Thirty-five years later, women still arrive at clubhouses where somebody has already unlocked the doors.

Somebody has marked the pitches.

Somebody has organised the fixtures.

Somebody has decided the game is worth giving their time to.

The Women's Rugby World Cup exists because four volunteers made exactly the same decision

---

You may not have known their names before reading this article.

Now you do.

And the next time the world gathers to celebrate the very best of women's rugby, perhaps spare a thought for the four volunteers who quietly proved that the impossible sometimes begins with nothing more than an idea, a few determined people... and the courage to start.

“Every revolution begins with someone deciding that waiting is no longer an option.”

---

Historical Context

The inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup was held in Cardiff, Wales, in 1991. Organised independently by Deborah Griffin, Sue Dorrington, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth, the tournament laid the foundations for the modern Women's Rugby World Cup.

Anonymous 15 - The Committee

Anonymous 15 has been on the committee.

She will not be going back.

Not after what she saw.

Column No. 2

Every rugby club has a committee .Somebody elected them years ago. Nobody has seen that person since..


Nobody remembers agreeing to this. They simply appeared, like a mysterious smell in the changing room

that everyone pretends isn't there until one day you find the source and wish you hadn't.

The committee meets on the third Thursday of the month in the back room of a pub whose only qualification is that the chair's brother-in-law owns it.

There are eight people on the committee.

Four of them do everything.

Two of them are there to make sure the first four don't get too much credit for doing everything.

One of them has been "stepping back for personal reasons" since 2021 but still votes on everything and once sent a seventeen-message voice note to the group chat at 1am about the colour of the away kit.

And one of them — and I want you to understand this is a real person at a real club and she knows who she is — one of them has not done a single visible thing in three years but somehow gets a special mention in every end-of-season speech, described as "the backbone of this club," while the people who actually keep the lights on stand at the back with their wine and smile like they've been doing it their whole lives.

Which they have.

“They simply appeared, like a mysterious smell in the changing room”

Then there's Kryssi.

With a K. She'll tell you.

Why does Kryssi do it?

This is a question I have spent considerable time on.

Option A: Kryssi genuinely loves this club. She loves the players, the culture, the mud, the chaos, the 6am pitch inspections in November, the kit that arrives in the wrong sizes, the county meetings that could have been an email, the AGM that could have been nothing. She loves all of it. She is, in the purest sense, a person for whom rugby is not something she does but something she is.

This is possible.

Option B: Kryssi cannot say no. Not to anyone. Not about anything. She once agreed to cover three training sessions, organise the tour, write the match reports AND manage the new player enquiries in the same week because someone asked her in a car park and she didn't know how to get out of it. She has the word "no" somewhere in her vocabulary but it has never been located under operational conditions.

This is also possible.

Option C: The 2022 end-of-season awards.

I'm not going to tell you everything that happened at the 2022 end-of-season awards.

What I will tell you is this.

There was a chairlift. There was a speech. There was a person who shall remain nameless who made a toast that will never, under any circumstances, appear in the minutes. There was an incident involving the club president, a novelty trophy and the fire door that I have been asked by multiple parties never to speak of again.

And Kryssi was there for all of it.

Kryssi remembers all of it.

And somehow, the following January, Kryssi ended up with the keys.

Draw your own conclusions.

The committee recently held a volunteer recruitment drive.

They made a poster. It had a motivational font and a photograph of the first team from 2021, which is a bold choice given that two of the players in it have since left under circumstances nobody will discuss at volume and one of them is now playing for a rival club that beat us in the cup and celebrated in a manner I still find personally offensive.

The poster said: Get Involved. Shape The Future.

Six people responded.

One wanted to know if there was a discount on match fees.

One asked to be put in charge of social media because she had ideas. She was given social media. She posted twice and then went quiet. The last post is still pinned. It is a picture of a rugby ball with the caption "Big things coming 👀". That was fourteen months ago.

One turned out to already be on the committee and had missed the email because she'd muted the group chat and hadn't told anyone.

One came to the first meeting, said "wow, there's a lot going on isn't there" and was never seen again.

One joined with genuine enthusiasm, rewrote the entire volunteer onboarding process, created a shared drive, colour-coded the fixture responsibilities and sent a twelve-point improvement plan to the committee. The committee said they'd look at it. That was eight months ago. The shared drive has not been opened since March. Nobody remembers the password.

And one — and I say this as someone who was in the room — one person looked at the agenda, looked at the faces around the table, looked at the seventeen-item AOB list at 9:45pm on a Thursday, and said, very quietly: "I think I've made a mistake."

She had.

We all had

Here is what nobody tells you about the committee.

The committee knows everything.

Not the official everything. The other everything.

Who's been asked to leave a rival club and why. Which coach is thinking about walking. Which player has been having the same "conversation" with the same selector for three seasons running. Which sponsor is about to pull out. Which official complaint is sitting in someone's inbox that hasn't been actioned because the person who needs to action it is the person it's about.

The committee knows.

Kryssi especially knows.

Kryssi with a K.

And every year at the awards dinner, Kryssi stands up, gives a little speech about what a privilege it is, how much the club means to her, how she'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

And every year, I watch the faces of the people who know about the chairlift, and the toast, and the incident with the fire door.

And every single one of them is smiling.

Volunteer for your club.

Genuinely. It matters. They need you.

But maybe — and I say this as someone with direct experience — maybe read the room first.

And if Kryssi offers you a key?

Don't take it

Anonymous 15.

Some details have been changed to protect the innocent. And the committee.

Dear Gilbert

Questions, dilemmas and occasional rugby-related chaos

Gilbert reads every letter — probably.

The letters. The advice. Make of it what you will.

• Future Whistler

  I'm thinking about qualifying as a referee once I stop playing, but I've seen what some refs put up with — shouting, abuse, parents on the touchline. I love the game and want to stay involved, but I'm not sure I can handle being the person everyone's angry at every week.
  
  Dear Future Whistle.
  Good. That hesitation means you understand what you're signing up for, which puts you ahead of most people currently shouting at referees.
  Here's what nobody tells you: the abuse says almost nothing about you and everything about the shouter. You'll make the right call and get screamed at anyway, because someone needed somewhere to put their frustration and you were standing there holding a whistle.
  The players who actually respect referees — and there are more of them than the shouting suggests — will tell you plainly when you've had a good game. Hold onto that. It matters more than the noise.
  Every referee working women's rugby right now was once exactly where you are, wondering if they could handle it.
  — Gilbert
  

• Am I the only one doing the kit wash?

  I've done the kit wash four weekends running. Nobody else has volunteered, nobody's replaced me, and when I mentioned it in the group chat I got two thumbs-up emojis and silence. Do I keep doing it forever now?

  Dear Volunteer By Default.
  Yes.
  That's how it works.
  You did it once, competently, without complaining, and the squad's collective memory quietly filed you under "kit person" — permanently, no appeals process.
  Every club has one. The kit person, the minibus person, the one who always has strapping tape. Nobody appoints them. They just make one competent decision early in their career and never recover from it.
  The good news: this is a form of power. You control access to clean shorts. Use it wisely.
  The bad news: the only way out is finding someone even more competent than you, handing it over mid-sentence, and immediately leaving the room.
  — Gilbert

• Can I say no?

  I’ve somehow become the person who organises everything at our club. Fixtures, WhatsApp groups, teas, volunteers, fundraising, Christmas raffle, end-of-season awards… every year I say I’ll do less and every year somebody asks if I can “just sort one more thing”. I love the club, but I’m exhausted. Am I allowed to say no?

  Dear Indispensable
  Yes.

  In fact, you probably should.

  Rugby clubs have a remarkable ability to mistake reliability for availability.

  The first time you help, you’re appreciated.

  The tenth time, you’re expected.

  The hundredth time, people assume you were born holding a clipboard.

  Here’s the thing.

  If your club genuinely can’t function without one volunteer doing twelve jobs…

  …the problem isn’t you.

  It’s the system.

  Say no occasionally.

  Not because you care less.

  Because you want to care for longer.

  The game needs volunteers.

  It also needs them to come back next season.

  — Gilbert

• Music Ear Worm

  Dear Gilbert,

  Every week before kick-off, the same girl commandeers the changing room speaker and plays the exact same three songs, in the exact same order, at a volume that suggests she's personally trying to summon a war god. When challenged, she says it's "the ritual" and cannot be reasoned with. We have tried democracy. We have tried sabotage. Last week someone hid the speaker and she produced a second, backup speaker from her kit bag like some kind of unhinged Bond villain. How do I stage a coup?

  — Sick of "Freed From Desire" Before I've Even Strapped My Boots

  Gilbert says:

  You don't stage a coup. You've clearly already tried, and she came prepared with a contingency speaker, which tells you everything about the seriousness of what you're up against. This is not a woman who leaves things to chance. This is a woman with a laminated warm-up routine.

  Here is the thing you're missing: it isn't really about the songs. Nobody on earth needs to hear the same three-track playlist fifty-two Saturdays a year and still feel something. But rituals aren't there to be good — they're there to be reliable. In a sport where your studs might snap in the mud, the ref might be having a personal crisis, and Sharon might have forgotten the corner flags again, "the same three songs, in the same order, too loud" is the one constant in the universe. You are not fighting a playlist. You are fighting the closest thing your team has to religion.

  My advice: stop trying to remove the ritual and start trying to own a corner of it. Ask to pick track two. Not track one — that's hers, don't touch it, you'll start a war you can't win — but track two is negotiable territory if you frame it as tribute rather than rebellion. Within a season you'll have co-opted the whole thing and be the one arriving early with your own backup speaker.

  Alternatively: earplugs, and make peace with the fact that "Freed From Desire" is now permanently, tragically, associated with slightly muddy shin pads. This happens to everyone. There is no cure.

  Yours, humming it against his will right now,
  Gilbert.

“Got a problem you think I can’t handle? You can write to me below”

— Gilbert

Talking Rugby

Eight. And Counting.

“The 2026 Women’s Six Nations wasn’t just another England title. It was proof that something fundamental has changed about this sport. And this time, the whole world was watching.”

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The Numbers That Changed Everything

There is a moment, somewhere in the middle of a sporting revolution, when the numbers stop being statistics and start being statements
.

The 2026 Women's Six Nations was full of those moments.

77,120 people filed into Allianz Stadium in Twickenham for England against Ireland on the opening weekend. Not a sold-out final. Not a World Cup decider. Round One. The first Saturday in April. And still, 77,120 people came.

That figure shattered the previous Women's Six Nations attendance record by more than 18,000. It wasn't a small increase. It wasn't incremental growth. It was a signal.

By the time the tournament ended five weeks later, the 2026 Women's Six Nations had averaged 18,000 fans per game — an 84% increase on 2025. Total attendance across the championship reached 194,466, surpassing the previous full tournament record before the final round had even been played.

For the first time in their history, both Ireland and Scotland broke the 30,000 fan ceiling. Murrayfield hosted its first Women's Six Nations match and 30,498 turned up — a national record for a standalone women's sporting event in Scotland, breaking a record set by the Scotland women's football team just seven years ago. In Dublin, the Aviva Stadium opened its doors to Irish women's rugby for the first time. They came in their thousands.

Five nations set national or tournament attendance records during a single championship.

This is not a niche sport finding its feet. This is a sport arriving.

---

The Team Behind The Title

England won their eighth consecutive Women's Six Nations title. Their fifth Grand Slam in a row. Their 38th consecutive match without defeat.

At some point the records become almost impossible to contextualise. So instead of more numbers, consider the people behind them.

Consider Amy Cokayne. The Sale hooker — RAF background, ferocious work rate, the kind of player who seems to find turnovers the way other people find loose change — was at the heart of everything England did in 2026. Six tries, the second highest tally in the entire championship. Seven turnovers, joint highest of any player in the tournament. And a lineout completion rate of 97.9% — the highest of any hooker in the competition. That last figure is almost offensive. In a tournament where set piece accuracy can decide matches, Cokayne was operating at a level that made the lineout look easy.

It wasn't easy. It never is.

Then there is Zoe Harrison. The Saracens fly-half kicked at 94% accuracy across the tournament — a figure that reflects not just technical skill but composure under pressure. When England needed points, she delivered them. When England needed field position, she found it. The quiet engine in a team of visible stars.

And Ellie Kildunne. Still unstoppable. Still the player on the cover of Issue 01. Still the first name opposition coaches write on their tactical whiteboards.

---

Bordeaux. That First Half.

There are matches that reveal something true about a team. The Grand Slam decider in Bordeaux on May 17th was one of them.

France had prepared carefully and deliberately. Head coach François Ratier made just two changes to his starting XV, prioritising cohesion and familiarity. England, by contrast, made seven alterations — some enforced by injury, some tactical. On paper, before kick-off, France had the more settled team. They had home advantage. They had a crowd behind them. They had everything except the habit of winning.

The opening ten minutes belonged to France.

England were ill-disciplined, conceding territory and inviting pressure. France found space out wide through the blistering pace of winger Léa Murie. When loosehead Ambre Mwayembe stripped the ball cleanly from Mackenzie Carson in the English 22, Murie broke clear and timed her inside pass perfectly for scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus to coast under the posts. Carla Arbez converted. France led 7-0.

In a Bordeaux crowd of thousands, it must have felt like a beginning.

England had other ideas.

What followed in the next thirty minutes was a masterclass in the clinical efficiency that has made this team almost impossible to beat. England didn't panic. They didn't restructure. They simply waited for France to give them something, and when France did, they took it.

First it was a heavy midfield exchange that gave Amy Cokayne the platform to drag England to the line, before Sarah Bern showed the full force of her considerable self to crash over. Harrison converted. 7-7.

Then France made an unforced handling error in midfield — the kind of mistake that changes matches. Claudia Moloney-MacDonald and Megan Jones hacked the bouncing ball forward into space and Ellie Kildunne gathered cleanly and touched down under the posts. England led 14-7 and France, despite their composure, had not yet worked out how to stop it.

With the half closing in, England won a scrum penalty deep in French territory. Their rolling maul was halted but England had the presence of mind to shift the ball wide, and Jess Breach — as she so often does — finished in the corner under pressure. Harrison's conversion from the touchline was marvellous. 21-7.

Then, in the final play before half time, Helena Rowland found Kildunne with a long miss-pass that dissected the French defence. Her second of the afternoon. Her composure in taking it as if time had slowed down around her.

England went in at half time leading 26-7.

They had been behind. They had been under pressure. They had been in France, in front of a crowd that desperately wanted a different outcome.

And they had scored four tries in thirty minutes.

---

More Than The Red Roses

This is an England story. Of course it is. Eight titles in a row demands to be told.

But the 2026 Women's Six Nations was also something else — a tournament in which the whole competition grew.

Ireland broke records at the Aviva Stadium. Scotland broke records at Murrayfield. France pushed England to the edge of a Grand Slam in Bordeaux in a match that finished 43-28 but felt closer than that for long periods. Wales drew 500,000 viewers on BBC Two for their match against England — a national record.

The competition is not just England and the rest. It is becoming something richer, something more contested, something that can fill the Aviva for the first time and sell out Murrayfield and send 77,120 people to Twickenham on an April afternoon.

The game is changing. It has been changing for years.

In 2026, it changed in front of more people than ever before.

---

Eight titles. Five consecutive Grand Slams. Thirty-eight matches unbeaten. The Red Roses keep writing history.

The rest of the game is catching up.

Good.

In Profile

Hollie Davidson

The whistle, the pressure and seeing the game differently.

The stadium falls quiet for a moment.

Not silent. Rugby stadiums are never silent. There are still conversations in the crowd, still movement in the stands, still players making final adjustments before kick-off. But there is a moment, just before the game begins, when thousands of people collectively hold their breath.

Most eyes are on the players.

Few are looking at the referee.

That's probably how Hollie Davidson likes it.

Because while much of modern sport is built around personalities, profiles and headlines, refereeing remains one of rugby's most unusual jobs. If you've done it perfectly, people barely notice. If you've made a mistake, everyone notices.

And yet Davidson keeps walking into the middle of some of the biggest rugby matches in the world.

---

The story could easily be told through milestones.

First woman to referee a men's Six Nations match — and before that, the first female assistant referee in the same competition.

First woman to referee a European professional final.

First woman to referee matches involving the All Blacks and Springboks.

Referee of two Women's Rugby World Cup finals.

World Rugby Referee Award recipient.

Inducted into the Scottish Rugby Hall of Fame (2025).

It's an impressive list.

But milestones rarely tell the whole story.

“Few are looking at the referee. That’s probably how Hollie Davidson likes it.”

What makes Davidson interesting isn't simply where she's ended up. It's how she got there.

Long before she became one of the most recognisable referees in world rugby, Davidson was a player.

A scrum-half.

The sort of player she once described as a "yappy little terrier".

She represented Scotland at Under-20 level and looked set for a future in the game. Then came injury. Called up to the senior Scotland squad, Davidson dislocated her shoulder in a practice game the week before her first cap. Two surgeries followed. One path ended before it had properly begun.

For many players, that's where the story ends.

Rugby becomes something they used to do.

Something they occasionally miss.

Something they talk about in the past tense.

For Davidson, it became the beginning of something else.

---

One of the themes that appears repeatedly throughout rugby is that people rarely stay for the reasons they expect.

Players join because they want to play.

Years later they find themselves coaching.

Or volunteering.

Or organising tours.

Or standing in the middle with a whistle.

The game has a habit of keeping people around.

Davidson found refereeing almost by accident. What started as a way to remain involved gradually became something bigger. In 2017 she left a career in banking, taking a significant pay cut to become Scotland's first full-time professional female referee.

At the time, it looked like a gamble.

Looking back now, it looks like the moment everything changed.

---

Rugby referees occupy a strange space.

They are central to every match yet rarely the focus of it.

The best officials combine authority with communication, confidence with humility, decisiveness with calm. They have to manage pressure, criticism and occasionally thousands of people who disagree with them simultaneously.

Davidson seems unusually comfortable in that environment.

Players and coaches frequently talk about her communication. Her ability to explain decisions. Her calmness in difficult moments. Her willingness to make big calls when the game demands it.

Those qualities have taken her from local club grounds to the biggest stages in rugby.

Not overnight.

Not without setbacks.

And certainly not without criticism.

---

Early in her refereeing career, Davidson often arrived at clubs where people assumed she couldn't possibly be the referee.

Some thought she was a physio.

Others questioned whether a woman could keep up with the men's game.

There were comments from touchlines.

Doubts.

Assumptions.

The usual collection of obstacles that tend to appear whenever somebody is first through a particular door.

The remarkable thing is how quickly those conversations disappear once the whistle blows.

Because rugby players ultimately care about one thing.

Can you referee?

Davidson could.

And increasingly, she was doing it at levels where nobody could ignore it.

---

Today her CV includes World Cups, Six Nations fixtures, international test matches and professional finals.

She has officiated in front of packed stadiums and global audiences. She has become one of the most respected referees in the game.

Yet there is something refreshing about the way she talks about rugby.

Not as a trailblazer.

Not as a pioneer.

Simply as somebody who loves the sport.

The same sport she watched as a child.

The same sport she played.

The same sport she found a way back into when playing was no longer possible.

Perhaps that's the lesson hidden inside her story.

Rugby doesn't always give us the journey we expected.

Sometimes the playing career ends too early.

Sometimes the role changes.

Sometimes the dream evolves into something different.

But for those who stay involved, the game has an extraordinary ability to open unexpected doors.

Davidson walked through one carrying a whistle.

The rest is history

.

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More Than Matchday

Cover Feature

The friendships, rituals and moments that make rugby impossible to leave behind.

Nobody remembers the score from three seasons ago. Nobody can tell you the exact date of the match, or who kicked the conversion, or what the weather was doing in the second half. But ask any rugby player about that season and something else surfaces immediately. The away trip where the minibus broke down outside Coventry. The teammate who always brought the wrong boots. The post-match curry that turned into a four-hour conversation about everything except rugby

The stuff that doesn't make the match report. The stuff that makes it impossible to leave..

Nobody Stays For The Tries

There's a version of women's rugby that exists in highlight reels and Six Nations coverage. Big crowds. Big moments. Players you recognise from billboards and breakfast television. It's real, and it matters, and it's something women's rugby has earned after decades of being treated as an afterthought.

But that's not why most women play.

Ask a grassroots player why she started and the answer is usually simple. A friend dragged her along. A university freshers' fair. A moment of curiosity that turned into a Tuesday evening, then a Sunday morning, then somehow the whole weekend.

Ask her why she stayed and the answer gets harder to explain.

It's not the tries. It's not the trophies. Most clubs at grassroots level aren't winning leagues or producing internationals. The pitches are sometimes questionable. The changing rooms have seen better decades.

And yet the retention rate in women's rugby is remarkable. Players who come for a season stay for ten. Women who joined knowing nothing become coaches, referees, committee members, the person who drives the minibus and still somehow makes it to work on Monday morning.

Something is keeping them there. And it isn't the tries.

“Rugby builds a community that looks, from the outside, like sport.”

The Things We Don’t Put In The Team Photo

The team photo captures fifteen players in a line. Shirts tucked in. Someone squinting into the sun. The coach looking slightly uncertain about what to do with their hands.

What it doesn't capture is everything else.

The WhatsApp group that has been active since 2019 and has somehow become the primary social infrastructure of at least six women's lives. The car journey to an away fixture that turned into an impromptu life coaching session at sixty miles an hour on the M6. The player who started coming to training after a difficult year and didn't say much for three months and then one Tuesday evening laughed so hard that something quietly shifted.

Rugby builds community that looks, from the outside, like sport. From the inside it's something else entirely. It's the coffee after training that runs forty minutes longer than anyone planned. The away trip tradition that cannot be explained to anyone who wasn't there and doesn't need to be because everyone who was there already knows.

These are the invisible parts of rugby. They don't appear in league tables or match reports. They exist in the spaces between the game.

They are, quietly, the whole point.

THE THINGS EVERY RUGBY PLAYER KNOWS

One player joined planning to stay six weeks. Eight years later she is club secretary, vice-captain, and owns three waterproof jackets she doesn't remember buying.

Your kit bag contains at least one mystery item.

Somebody else's boots live in your car.

The WhatsApp group is legally binding.

The post-match chips matter.

Athletic tape reproduces when left unattended.

You've explained offside. Nobody understood.

You tried again.

The Quiet Moments

Taped wrists before a match. The specific weight of a gumshield in a shorts pocket. Boots left by the door still carrying last Sunday's mud.

Rugby has a texture that exists outside the ninety minutes. It lives in the small rituals that accumulate over seasons until they become as familiar as anything else in a week. The Wednesday evening drive to training. The particular silence of a changing room ten minutes before kick-off. The first coffee afterwards when everything aches pleasantly and nobody is in any hurry.

These are the moments that don't photograph easily and don't translate well into words but exist, vividly, in the memory of anyone who has played for long enough.

This is the texture of rugby life. Not the scoreboard. Not the league table. The quiet, ordinary, irreplaceable texture of showing up week after week for something that matters more than it probably should.

“Most matches are forgotten. The people don’t fade.”

Why We Stay

Nobody stays because of the weather. November in England is not a compelling argument for outdoor sport. Nor is the cost, which is real. Nor the time commitment, which somehow expands to fill whatever space is available until rugby is no longer something you do but something you are.

And yet people stay. Through injuries and moves and new jobs and difficult seasons. Through years when everything clicks and years when it all falls apart. They stay when it would be entirely reasonable to stop.

Why?

The honest answer, given enough time and enough post-match honesty, tends to sound like this.

Because I found my people.

It sounds simple. It is simple. Women's rugby has a particular gift for producing communities that feel, from the first session, like somewhere you were supposed to end up. There is something about the shared physical effort, the shared vulnerability of learning something new, the shared absurdity of the whole endeavour that creates intimacy quickly. You cannot be guarded and play rugby. The game requires too much of you for that.

What grows in that space is something that doesn't have a clean name. Belonging, maybe. The particular belonging that comes from being known, properly known, by people who have seen you at your least composed and most muddy and still saved you a seat at the table afterwards.

That's why we stay. Not for the tries. Not for the trophies. For the person who texts to check you're okay after a hard match. For the Tuesday evening when you didn't want to go and went anyway and came home feeling, inexplicably, like yourself again.

Rugby gives women a lot of things. But the thing it gives most reliably, most stubbornly, across decades and divisions and all the variables of a sporting life, is this.

A place to belong.

The Final Whistle

Most matches are forgotten. The scores fade, the seasons blur, the league tables change.

The people don't fade.

The woman who drove you home after your first match. The teammate who has played through things that would have stopped most people and keeps turning up anyway. The coach who saw something in you before you saw it yourself.

Women's rugby is growing. The stadiums are filling, the players are becoming the household names the sport has always deserved. All of that matters.

But the heart of the game has always been here. In the quiet moments before kick-off and the long evenings after. In the communities built on cold Tuesday nights in places nobody has heard of. In the stubborn, joyful, completely irrational decision to keep showing up.

More than matchday.

That's what this has always been.

— XV Editor

Dear Gilbert

Questions, dilemmas and occasional rugby-related chaos

Gilbert reads every letter — probably.

The letters. The advice. Make of it what you will.

• Does our coach have favourites?

  Our coach clearly has favourites. The same players start every week. The same players get praised. The same players seem able to make mistakes without consequences. Meanwhile, the rest of us spend Saturday wondering whether we're actually competing for a place or just making up the numbers. Before you ask, yes, I am currently on the bench. Am I being unreasonable?
  
  
  Dear Bench Warmer.
  
  Probably.
  
  But here's something your coach understands that you don't yet.
  
  This is a 23-player game. The starting XV sets it up. The finishers win it. Nobody calls them substitutes anymore. There's a reason for that. You have two choices. Spend the season resenting the starting XV. Or become the player your coach sends on at sixty minutes specifically to ruin somebody else's afternoon. One of those options requires considerably less energy.
  
  — Gilbert

• Is rugby really just a hobby?

  My partner doesn't play rugby and I don't think she understands why it takes over my life. Training twice a week. Matches on Sundays. Team socials. Endless WhatsApp messages. Apparently every story I tell now starts with, "One of the girls from rugby..." Last week she asked why I couldn't just treat it like a normal hobby. I didn't have an answer. Why does rugby become such a big thing?
  
  

  Dear All or Nothing

  Because it isn't a hobby.

  Knitting is a hobby.

  Collecting stamps is a hobby.

  Rugby is an administrative condition that gradually acquires complete control of your calendar.

  Your partner is looking at the hours.

  You are looking at the people.

  That's the difference.

  The problem is that rugby players are terrible at explaining this. Ask one why they keep turning up and they'll start talking about line-outs before wandering off entirely.

  Try telling the truth.

  You like the game.

  You love the people.

  And occasionally you'd quite like a weekend that doesn't involve driving to somewhere called Market Deeping in the rain.

  That's usually enough.

  — Gilbert

• How long is too long to not apologise?

  My best friend and I play on the same team. Three months ago we had an argument. Neither of us has apologised. We still train together twice a week. We still stand next to each other during drills. We still travel to away games. We just don't really speak. At this point I'm not even sure what we're angry about anymore. Any advice?
  
  
  Dear Stubborn.

  Yes.

  Grow up.

  You've managed to turn a disagreement into a long-term infrastructure project.

  Three months.

  Do you know how many things rugby players can argue about in three months?

  Selection. Training. Kit. Captains. Coaches. Parking.

  You could have had six new disagreements by now.

  Instead you've committed to the original one.

  Impressive dedication.

  Send the message.

  Not a paragraph.

  Not an essay.

  Not a carefully crafted statement approved by legal counsel.

  Just:

  "Fancy a coffee?"

  If she says no, you've learned something.

  If she says yes, you'll both discover you've wasted an extraordinary amount of time.

  — Gilbert

• Am I actually any good at this?

  I've been playing for two seasons. Everyone else seems to be improving faster than me. I still miss tackles. I still make mistakes. I still occasionally have absolutely no idea what's happening. Lately I've started wondering whether I'm actually any good at rugby. I'm thinking about quitting.
  
  
  Dear Permanent Beginner.

  Excellent.

  You've reached the stage where you finally understand rugby.

  The players who think they're brilliant are usually the ones causing the most paperwork for everyone else.

  You've been playing for two years.

  That's not experience.

  That's an introduction.

  The good news is that nobody remembers your mistakes as much as you do.

  The bad news is that they remember some of them.

  But that's rugby.

  You make a mistake.

  You get up.

  You do it again.

  Then one day somebody newer arrives and starts making exactly the same mistakes.

  And suddenly you're the experienced player.

  Annoying, isn't it?

  — Gilbert

“Got a problem you think I can’t handle? You can write to me below”

— Gilbert

Anonymous 15

Column No. 1

Anonymous 15 has played rugby long enough to know better. The bag is already by the front door.

There is something specific about a rugby kit bag on a Tuesday night in November. Not the bag itself — the bag is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's a battered duffel with a broken zip or something expensive you bought during a brief period of optimism. What matters is the interior ecosystem, which is always, without exception, identical.

Top layer: the clothes you wore to work, folded with unreasonable neatness. Below that: a stud wrench for boots you no longer own. Three half-unrolled strips of sock tape, grey with lint. A sports bra that lost its elasticity somewhere around 2021 but has retained every memory of a rain-soaked away fixture you'd rather forget. And at the very bottom, beneath the loose ibuprofen and a banana that has been in there since September: the smell. Deep heat and damp turf and cold changing rooms and something that might generously be described as unwashed pride.

We carry our lives in these bags.

Nobody made us do this. We chose it. After a forty-hour week, against all available evidence that it was a reasonable idea, we chose it.

That's probably the first thing you should know about me.

I'm not going to tell you who I am. That's the point.

I could play for your club. I could play against your club. I could be standing next to you every Tuesday night, eating that banana I should have thrown away in September.

What I will tell you is this: I've been around rugby long enough to have seen things. Good things, strange things, things that should never have happened at an away fixture in Coventry. I've seen players retire so many times that nobody bothers saying goodbye anymore. I've seen friendships survive injuries, bad selections, heavy defeats and committee meetings — particularly committee meetings.

The game changes. The people don't.

Every club has these stories. Every team has them. Every player has a few they'd rather nobody found out about.

Those are the ones we'll be talking about.

See you next issue.

— Anonymous 15

“Anonymous 15 is a fictional character. Or is she?”