The Red Roses

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I had no introduction to rugby until I went to Swansea University, where I studied politics. I wanted to join the football team and went to the freshers' fair with my heart set on being a central midfielder. The football coach was on his phone and didn't stop texting to answer my questions about joining. Feeling quite downtrodden, I carried on wandering around the fair and saw a girl with a can of cider in her hand, pouring it all over her face. She was doing a straight-arm pint, or something like that. She had to try and drink her cider without bending her elbow. I could see her bruised legs and could hear her team-mates clapping her on. Whatever club she was in, I wanted to join. I walked over and introduced myself and she gave me a sip of her cider. She told me her name was Clara and she played rugby for the university. I signed up instantly.

I went along to my first training session and there was Siwan Lillicrap, who later went on to become the Wales captain. At the time she was the director of rugby at Swansea University and my first impression of her was that she was bloody scary. Her thick Swansea accent was made harder to understand because she seemed to shout everything. I was relieved when another coach said, 'You're with me, mush.' The coach was Sam Cook, or Cookie, as I knew him. I had turned up in a South Africa rugby jersey which had been a birthday present (only because I was in South Africa for my birthday, not because of any real interest in rugby), and Cookie had seen that and assumed I was therefore a rugby player. He demonstrated a gentle tackle on me, walking through the stages of placing cheek to bum cheek, wrapping arms and putting the player on the floor. I remember thinking I needed to keep a strong face and pretend it didn't hurt. At the end of the session, Cookie asked me if I would like to play in the 'Old Girls' fixture on the Wednesday, two days on from that first training session. Like any good fresher keen to look a lot braver than they really are, I said yes, unaware that I had just signed up to play a full-contact rugby match against players including Siwan. Off to Sports Direct I went, ready to spend as little of my student loan as possible on a pair of rugby boots and a gum shield.

I didn't make a single tackle or pass the ball once. Well, that stretches the truth a bit. There was one pass I made, but it's not a story I'm too proud of. Someone, for some unknown reason, passed me the ball and running towards me came Siwan. In that split second I had three choices: try and take this ball into contact (with no idea about how to present the ball), turn back and run away from Siwan, or stand still and piss my pants. In the end I just handed the ball to Siwan so she wouldn't tackle me. My rugby skills have improved only marginally since then.

As the years progressed, I made some wonderful friends who are the most fun people in my life. Clara turned out to be the best influence on me because she dragged me out of my shell and forced me to face my fears all the time. She made me braver and more able to stand up for myself. I also met two of my closest friends, Monique Latty and Angelika Jankowska, thanks to our days playing rugby at Swansea Uni. Joining rugby often made me behave terribly, broke my bones and gave me the ability to funnel a pint in under ten seconds. But most importantly, it gave me the most incredible friends. I go to rugby matches and bump into girls I used to play rugby with, I present events and spot faces in the crowd whom I once shared a huddle with. Women's rugby is a community of women who will challenge you, get the best out of you and party with you afterwards. When women work together, we achieve incredible things. There is no group or setting I have been in that is quite like those days of playing university women's rugby.

It gave me other things too, not least of which is my partner Nick, who coached women's rugby at Swansea University. He would probably sue me if I don't mention that he never coached me, but he was one of the coaches (don't blame me for dating one of the coaches, I watched Bend It Like Beckham growing up . . .). Anything tactical about rugby in this book, or anything I write, tends to be sense-checked by him. He was the first man I knew who was truly committed to women's rugby. He coached the Swansea Women (known as 'The Whites'), who were the best Premiership team in Wales for years, and self-funded his trip to the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup to support the players out there whom he coached at club level. People often say how lucky I am to have a partner who understands my world so well, but he was in this world long before me. And really, I had to pick someone who loved women's rugby or else I would have nothing to talk about. Women's rugby really is my entire personality.

But the most important thing that rugby gave me in those early days was my career. I studied politics at Swansea and tried to write every essay about feminism. I love learning about women's rights, and to this day whenever I type 'women's rugby' on my phone, autocorrect asks me if I mean 'women's rights'. Can you sense yet, reader, how utterly obsessed I am with women misbehaving? For me, women's rugby was a gateway into a world of women who were pushing against the status quo, working really hard, and frankly, looked like me. In my third year, now friends with Siwan and no longer completely terrified, I had a conversation with her about her week. She had a full-time job as director of rugby at Swansea University, but also played for Swansea Whites, Ospreys and Wales. Every single day of her week, from the early morning to the late evening, was spent either coaching or playing rugby. She was remarkable. It made me wonder if rugby fans realised the sacrifices women make to play international rugby.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist and had sort of expected to go into political journalism when I graduated. I had no contacts in the field but I had been writing for political blogs since I was 15, under a male alias, and had even been in a Channel 4 documentary about my feminist activism. By the time I was at university I had been invited to the House of Commons to speak about sexism in the media and how it affected young girls. At age 16 I had been on ITV's This Morning to speak about wanting to get rid of page three (for those unfamiliar, some national newspapers used to have boobs where there should be news on page three). I had no fear of speaking out and when Siwan told me about her week, I felt like my love for rugby could be used to do good, and I started a plan to become a women's rugby journalist.

I applied for work experience at The Times and feigned interest for a week at The Sunday Times Magazine while slowly walking past the sports desk every day until I eventually mustered up the courage to introduce myself. I secured a week of work experience there, during the Six Nations. In that week, a male journalist at the paper had written a piece suggesting that the Women's Six Nations should be moved to Wednesday nights so that the matches didn't clash with the men's Six Nations and therefore more fans watched. Did he not realise they had jobs? I pitched an idea to write about the sacrifices international women's rugby players make, spoke to players from Wales and Ireland - including Doctor Claire Molloy who played for Ireland at the time - and in the paper it went. The sports desk was impressed and asked me to stay on for another week. I wrote even more, and it was the start of my career, which now sees me write about women's rugby, present matches and talk about it on the radio and TV. For me, it is the greatest job in the world.

Writing this book has been a labour of the purest love. I adore women's rugby. I love the players, the people and the stories. Women's rugby is so much a part of me that I'm not sure if there's much else left. Thank you for supporting me, by buying this book, and letting me write so much about it.

I want to say thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this book, both on the record and off, with particular thanks to Marlie Packer, Jess Breach, Emily Scarratt, Maud Muir and Abbie Ward for their support.

And last but certainly not least: a heartfelt thank you to my family and friends. Writing a book is incredibly selfish. I have lost count of the plans I have had to cancel in order to write this book while working full-time for The Times. It has been an incredibly busy time. My partner Nick has been a great support, as have my parents Tracy and Neil, my twin brother Mark, my two remaining grandparents: Nana Chris and Nanny Pam, and my extended family, with special mention to my uncle Gareth, who have all bravely asked, 'How's the book going?', and even more bravely, stuck around for the answer.

I would like to finish with a final acknowledgement to my Grandad Den, whose portrait sits proudly on my desk as I type this sentence, and as I have typed this entire book. In the photo his tie is skew-whiff, he has my mum's red sun hat on, and he has a cigarette balancing between his lips. It was taken after a particularly good night out, I am told. He was the most incredibly funny man, whom I loved and cared for deeply. He really didn't like women's rugby, or more specifically, he really didn't like me playing women's rugby, but he kept a collection of my published work next to him in his chair and I know he would have been so proud of me for writing this...