Giselle Mather

She was the first woman to earn level 3 and level 4 coaching badges. The first woman to lead a men’s side on a three-promotion, double-Twickenham victory, 62-game unbeaten run. The first woman to get a full-time coaching post at a Premiership club. But to coach the country she helped to two World Cup finals? Not even an interview. And that, is what ‘almost’ broke Giselle Mather. 

The football player and then manager Steve Coppell has undoubtedly done many great things. As a right winger for Manchester United, he helped them win the FA Cup (2-1, 1977, a result that also stopped Liverpool securing a treble) and he also helped England beat Scotland four times (losing once) in an era when they actually had some decent players. 

Best of all, however, he helped give the world the greatest FA Cup final song ever – Glad All Over (it was a cover, but still by far the best – internet: discuss) – when he coached Crystal Palace to the 1990 FA Cup final against his former side, Manchester United (itself a 3-3 thriller and arguably one of the best of the modern era, but a discussion for another time, and probably another magazine). 

But, looping the narrative back to this sport, he also helped give the rugby world Giselle Mather: the first woman to gain the level 3 and level 4 coaching awards; the first woman to hold a coaching position in a professional club rugby set-up; the coach who led a local club side on a three-year unbeaten run and two Twickenham victories; and the most seemingly qualified and suitable coach to go for the England women’s head coach position and not even get an interview (but we’ll come back to that). “When I was seven, Man United played in the FA Cup final [1976, against Southampton, losing 1-0] and my brother had already picked West Ham as his team earlier in the season, so I picked Man United as mine,” explains Giselle, when we meet in the clubhouse of Wasps FC in west London, home also to her Wasps Allianz Premier 15s outfit. “Then, on my tenth birthday, my dad took me to see Brazil against England at Wembley [1978, 1-1] to see Stevie Coppell, because he was my hero. 

“We got there, went on to the concourse and walked up the steps to the sight of Wembley – I remember it so clearly, it was packed, the noise. I’d never been to a game before, but I can even remember the songs, what happened when we scored, the anthems, the lot. And from then I knew I wanted to play sport for my country, I just didn’t know which sport.”

Her love of Coppell also taught her another lesson. “When I was twelve we had to write a story at school and I wrote about playing in the FA Cup final for Man United against Arsenal,” recalls Giselle, “it got printed in the school magazine and I sent that magazine to Stevie Coppell and he wrote back and thanked me. It was hand-written on paper with club badge on and everything – how good was that? 

“People don’t realise how much of an impact they can have,” she continues, “even if it’s just a wink, a nod, a shake of the hand or a signed autograph.

“I remember watching Jonny Wilkinson after an England training session spending two and a half hours signing stuff for the kids. And all those kids went away with the biggest smile because they’d met Jonny Wilkinson and they’ll carry that with them for life. That awareness should never leave you as a player, coach, or as a person. And Stevie Coppell was my thing...”

Giselle just needed a sport. “I set about my mission,” she says, “I don’t know how many sports I tried: netball (I was county, but too small), judo, fencing (south west champion at under-18), hockey (south west England), football, cricket – and with all of these things, I got to a good standard but never good enough for international.”

At university, Giselle was part of only the second group of girls to be accepted for PE at Exeter. “There were only eight girls in the year, and for year one we did all the sports but, for year two, boys go off and do rugby and the girls go to dance.

“And I went, ‘nah I’m going to do the rugby’. ‘No, you’ve got to do the dance,’ they said, ‘but I don’t want to do the dance, I want to do the rugby,’ I said again.”

At this point Giselle – whose boyfriend at the time played a good standard of rugby in Wales – wasn’t a player, just a keen observer of rugby, but she couldn’t resist its allure. Ignoring calls for her to do dance, she instead took herself to the boys’ rugby coaching and sat on the side of the pitch watching and taking notes. “I got called into the office because I wasn’t at my [dance] lecture,” she says. “It was, ‘you won’t get your degree if you don’t go to dance’, so I was ‘fine, don’t give me my degree, this is what I want to do’.

“They said I had to write a dissertation on dance in my own time, but I never wrote it, and they never asked for it.”

The only foray into playing had been at an invitational sevens’ tournament where she’d finished the game with a burst blood vessel in the eye courtesy of a stray finger, but when her home-town club Teddington set up a side, this experience – together with her study – was enough to make them desperate to recruit her. 

During term-time, the club would pay for her train to and from Exeter. “I’d play hockey for the uni on Saturday, then on the Sunday get a train to Paddington where there would be someone waiting to take me to the game,” she says. “Afterwards, a couple of beers, then back to Paddington – not forgetting to text my boyfriend to tell him which coach I was in, so he could come and find me if I fell asleep.”

The catch-pass of netball, the kicking from football, the tactical nous of hockey, the footwork of fencing, the physicality of judo: all of the sports Giselle had tried in her bid to emulate Stevie, came together in rugby. Although playing in the sport’s third tier with Teddington, she still did enough to get called up to an England camp. “I didn’t know anything about the game,” she admits, “I could just run around the place, pass and kick, but I didn’t really understand the game.”

At the session, Jim Greenwood ‘tore a strip’ off the newbie Giselle when she dropped a ball, but the earbashing had an impact, “I took absolutely everything from then on – he even offered me a place at Loughborough,” she laughs.

A move to Premiership club Richmond was essential to her England prospects and, after two seasons there, she went to Wasps, then based in Sudbury.  “For the first three years I sat on a bench for England,” says Giselle, “we only played a couple of internationals back then, but you did all the training and, when I look back, it was so important for my education. When I eventually did get my opportunity, I was ready...”

That first cap came as a result of the coach needing to reassure the other players that they could survive without Karen Almond. “Karen was the best player in the world at the time, she played ten, she was skipper and God knows what else, and I had no issues [about her starting], she was the best. 

“We were going out to play Holland, ahead of the first World Cup in 1991, and the coach said, ‘if Karen gets injured you all have to know we can still win, so Giselle is going to play this game’.”

As the side’s confidence booster, and with ‘one man and a dog watching’ Giselle helped the side win 26-0, even notching a few points with her kicking. “Then it was back on the bench and my second cap was in the World Cup final,” she says. “In those days you couldn’t replace unless somebody was injured, so I’d just sat on a bench, then Jane Mitchell dislocated her shoulder at fullback, so I came on at fifteen and loved it. 

“As soon as I came on, the American fly-half stuck the ball straight up in the sky, my first touch was a catch, I kicked, chased then ‘bang’, looking up at the Welsh sky – it was at the Arms Park. The American flanker said ‘welcome to the game’ – classic line, but that’s exactly what happened.

“We lost the game [19-6], but personally I was in a good space.”

After the World Cup, Giselle never got dropped, fitting in alongside Karen at twelve, and winning the World Cup final with her in 1994. This time, facing the USA once again, they won 38-23 at Edinburgh Academicals. Giselle was then working as a teacher. “I remember the assembly when I came back as a world champion and they were all cheering and clapping,” she recalls. “I was overwhelmed by it all, there were about 1,000 kids, they were all really supportive.”

Even back then, when the women’s sport was still very much in its infancy, there was interest in the World Cup win. “We got on Grandstand, we had fifteen minutes, which was mental,” she says. “All the front pages of the papers had something and we got invited to a few things too, including Buckingham Palace. Everybody who played sport was there, and I ran about the place like an idiot meeting everyone. 

“I was talking to a cyclist, and eventually said to them, ‘look, you can spend your time talking to me or we can go and talk to all these people – look at them all’. So that’s what we did, ran around talking to as many famous people as we could.”

They finished the night, as was de rigueur for the era, at Victor Ubogu’s bar in Fulham with an assortment of sport stars including Stuart Pearce and Gregor Townsend. Giselle’s rugby education was complete.

She returned to Teddington for one final campaign in 98-99, having made the promise of ending her playing days there years before, but was soon back at Wasps, this time as coach. Ever committed, even pregnant with first child Jasper, she didn’t step down from her duties. “I remember saying to them [the players], I will stand still,” she recalls. “So if you’re coming towards me [in the session] I will not move. “There were times when I shut my eyes and had to remind myself not to move but, fair play to them, they never collided with me.” 

Jasper arrived in 2000, and he was never far from the field. “I was also coaching the England development squad and, when he was eight months old, I had to take them to the European championships. 

“I took Jasper with me because my husband had been working in America, but I have never been so knackered in all of my life. We had three games in ten days, and when it was downtime for the players, I was sorting him out, feeding him, bathing him, trying to keep his routine. The first problem was the room didn’t have a bath, so reception brought this bucket up for him.”

Nonetheless, like many working mums (and dads) in charge of young children, Giselle defied the sleeping gods. “I remember it being 2am in the morning and having my foot on the Rock-a-Tot because he was awake, and I was having to go through all the stats and codes from the game, it was just crazy.”

Child two, Roxy, arrived comparatively soon after in 2002 and promptly joined her mum as the first females to take the level 3 coaching course. “There were 100 guys on the course and me – story of... – and I’d given birth six weeks before, but I knew that I was ready to take my level 3. 

“So, I rang up the RFU, saying ‘this is a courtesy call to say I’ll be bringing my daughter and feeding her – if I fail because she screams and I have to take her out then so be it’. You could hear the coughing and spluttering but they came back and said, ‘yes all fine as long as you’re discreet’ – oh, for God’s sake, what did they think I was going to do?”

For the first of the course’s three modules, she was paired in a group with Toby Booth [now of Ospreys, then of London Irish] and two other coaches. “Roxy slept in the Rock-a-Tot, I fed her when I needed to, meanwhile Toby had to listen to me talk rugby for a whole day – we stayed overnight – and I had to listen to him talk too. At the end of it, the two of us passed, the other two didn’t.”

Phase two saw her on-field module back at Wasps, where she was monitored for a season, then it was back in the classroom – with Toby once again. “Five months after that, he called me up to see if I would like to coach their Elite Player Development Group,” says Giselle. “Toby didn’t care that I was a woman, he’d listened to me talk rugby and obviously thought I knew what I was talking about – I was a PE teacher as well – and that’s when I started working with a really, really talented group of young lads.”

Completing the trilogy of babies/bumps and rugby stories, to make her life really difficult, Giselle had her third child, Barny, while still coaching Wasps – and in now typical style, he almost arrived pitch-side. “We were playing Richmond and we had to win to have any chance of the league,” she recalls. “But the day before had been the Grand National and, half-way through, it felt like things were kicking off [with contractions] and I’d made calls saying I might not be at the game. Things calmed down though, I went to bed and in the morning, no baby, so I rang up at 9am to say I was coming to the game.

“By game time, the contractions were coming good and strong, but I was still saying ‘no, I’m alright, it’s fine’. I remember half-way through the team talk having a massive contraction and having to stop talking – none of the girls had had kids, so they were, ‘oh my God, we can’t cope with this’.”

Barny held in there though and Wasps duly won, to set up another league title. “A friend of mine came up to me when the game finished and said, ‘look, I’m a midwife and do you know child three can go from what you’re doing to birth in three or four minutes? It’s my day off, so please can you go to hospital so we don’t have to do this pitch-side?”

Pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood has never slowed Giselle down. “Not really, I’ve never seen it as a reason to stop,” she says. “I don’t see why it would be a reason to not coach. I was fine, if it ever felt detrimental to the child I would stop, but it didn’t.

“At one point I was coaching Teddington Antlers – the club’s senior men’s side – the England under-20 women, and London Irish AASE all with three kids under the age of five. It was mad. 

“At the beginning, when I’d stopped teaching, coaching was the adult bit of my life,” she continues. “I’d be home with the kids 24/7 – which I loved, don’t get me wrong – but rugby kept me in touch with the real world. My husband would get home from work, we’d tag, and I’d go to Wasps or Teddington.”

And of course, all of them followed in her footsteps...  “None of them play rugby,” she says. “They played at school, both boys were good with ball in hand, useless in defence, and the daughter is unbelievably good at sport but rugby is the only thing she’s refused to do, which is a shame, as she’d be awesome.” 

Back to the coaching journey and, at London Irish, she also took on the AASA scheme – the full-time development of players from the age of sixteen. The two roles meant her stint at the Premiership club lasted a decade. “I coached Alex Corbisiero, Anthony and Marcus Watson, Jonathan Joseph, Tommy Homer, Marland Yarde,” she says, listing some of the players she coached at London Irish, “what a talented group, it was bonkers what you could achieve with that lot.

“It was brilliant, fabulous,” she says, “you saw the players from the age of sixteen to eighteen, turn from boys to young men. That cultural side of rugby is what I’m all about. Rugby is a massive vehicle for all shapes and sizes, for all different personalities and there’s so many life lessons...”

From when she started with London Irish in 2005 to when she finished in 2015, she also broke records outside of what she achieved in her day job. In 2008, she became the first woman to get her level four coaching award – this time she had to talk scrums with fellow attendee Neil Back. It was a feat that wasn’t repeated for ten years when Jo Yapp became the second level-4 female coach.

As coach of Teddington, she took the side on a 62-game unbeaten run, three consecutive promotions [Surrey 2 to London 2] and twice winning at Twickenham, in the RFU National Junior Vase and Senior Vase. 

Gender has generally never really been an issue for Giselle. She didn’t see it when she wanted to play football instead of netball at primary school, just as she didn’t see it at uni when she wanted to skip the dance classes. But there have been instances which were made awkward by the actions of others.  “I think there was only one occasion,” she says. “And I do generally prepare myself when I’m going into a situation where it’s going to be all guys and me, but on this one occasion I didn’t. 

“It was up at Northampton and Wayne Smith – who I think is unbelievable – was taking a session and I was so excited that I was going to listen to him.

“I was at London Irish at the time, and I’d signed up for it when I saw it and drove up on my own. But when I went in, all of the London Irish coaching staff were there – they hadn’t told me they were going and they hadn’t asked me if I’d like to come along. 

“I was the only girl in the room but I hadn’t computed that, what had thrown me was walking in and seeing Brian Smith [then DoR at London Irish] and all that lot there and they hadn’t asked me. They looked really uncomfortable when I walked in. 

“I didn’t sit with them and it took me probably the first 40 minutes of the session to disassociate myself from that and focus on what I was there to do.

“I’ve had moments when I’m female, that I’ve had to be really aware,” she continues, on the same thread of conversation. “Competition can throw up all sorts of things and I’m very competitive, and there’s been occasions when a male opposition coach can’t cope with the fact my side is making mincemeat of his and has behaved in a certain way. 

“Now, if I behave back in that kind of way, I’ve got an army of lads behind me that I coach that are fiercely protective because I’m female. Their natural instinct is to protect – I coach them, and I have their respect – so if someone comes up to me and is aggressive, they want to... 

“If I even venture to that, it could go... ... so you have to be aware of that.”

Gaining respect has never been an issue either. “A player, in my view, doesn’t give a monkeys who’s delivering to them,” she says, “as long as they are challenged, they are learning, they are valued as an individual and they enjoy what they do. If you have three or those four, you’re fine, if you have all four, even better. 

“If I work hard, I deliver, they don’t care – athletes are inherently selfish because they have to be to do the things they have to do to be the best they can be at the elite end.”

In 2015, a lot of things happened to Giselle. Gary Street stepped down from the head coach role of England and they needed a new head coach. Naturally, she applied. The combination of both playing and coaching experience, made her an ideal candidate. “I applied for the England women’s job, but I didn’t even get an interview. Interesting one that is...” she says, pausing to collect her thoughts, before starting again. “As with all females – and this is a bloody massive generalisation, but there’s an element of truth to it – I’d say 80 per cent of women will only go for job when they look at the criteria and say, ‘yeah, I can do that, that and that’. Most men will look at it and go, ‘yeah, I haven’t done that, but yeah I’ll be fine’.

“[with England] I ticked all of the boxes they asked for and I didn’t get an interview,” again she pauses, as if reviewing that moment once again. “There was a lot of hoo-hah about it at the time and I had a lot of soul searching to do on that – it threw up a lot of questions for me.”

The same year, she’d also realised that London Irish wasn’t going to be a route for progression either. “I said I’m not doing this anymore,” she says of her decision to leave the AASE role. “Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved it, the programme was really strong, I’d set up something – but I kept seeing guys coming off the field and going straight into the senior posts and they didn’t even consider me. I just thought ‘this isn’t going to change here’, they’re not looking at it from that point of view. And it still hasn’t happened...”

Not getting the interview with England hit Giselle for six. “I needed a break,” she admits, “so I took a year out. Coaching is a very giving profession.

“I had to process not getting the interview – what that may or may not mean. We as human beings can make things mean what we want them to mean, and sometimes our perception of situations isn’t right because, quite frequently, the breakdown of communication is all it is. 

“But I had to work all this out,” she continues. “I didn’t expect to get the job, but I did expect to get an interview. I was a coach that was fully qualified and, as a female, if you want to support the female game you really have to...” 

Giselle stops again, explaining she’s never really spoken to the media or publicly about this. “I didn’t expect the job,” she reiterates when she starts again, “but I needed to be interviewed, I think. 

“And I still look at that and go...” She stops again. “It’s the first time I’ve talked about this,” she repeats. “I’m not sure why I’m going down this route, it’s still quite raw really. 

“But, anyway, I came out of coaching for a whole year because of it. It wasn’t just that, it was the London Irish thing too. I had to reassess where I was in my coaching career and if I did perceive myself to be a coach that was capable of doing these things – that was a big thing.”

A year later, recharged, the phone rang, twice in the same week. “One was from here, one was from somewhere else,” she says. “Having taken the job here, a few months later I was told about the Tyrells Premier 15s and I had to get Wasps in there. At the time Wasps had only just stayed in the Prem with a play-off, so it was another new challenge, but here I am in my fourth year.”

Wasps are in good shape. Aside from an opening day defeat to Harlequins, they’ve since recorded three on the bounce, racking up 191 points in the process to put them in fourth spot. “Some people say to me ‘you should be in the men’s game, because that’s where it’s at’. But I look at this now, and I think the women’s game is where it’s at, I really believe that. 

“At the moment they aren’t full-time athletes, so there’s this perception that they’re not able to produce a great game. But honestly, these women that play the game, they hold down full-time jobs, they train like you wouldn’t believe, they are passionate and committed about what they do, they’ve got interesting stories, they are strong, powerful women – both physically and mentally.

“I have women coming in from the army, the air force, doctors, teachers, you name it, I have all sorts of people who have done a day’s work and they bring that with them, they bring that diversity of opinion, character, diversity – it’s a really rich environment. The characters are in there, we still have that. Having coached in the men’s game, if you’re a fully contracted athlete, rugby is all, that’s it, you don’t have all this other stuff to bring to the party, you’re in your rugby club 24/7.” 

The passion for the job hasn’t been tarnished, despite the England experience. Is there a glass ceiling? “There is one,” she admits. “That’s what I had to go and work out.”

So, you didn’t think there was one? “Not in my mind until that point,” she says. “I smashed my head quite hard on it, I think. And it didn’t break, it didn’t shatter around me, I broke instead, temporarily.”

You broke? “Well, maybe not ‘broke’, but yeah there was a note to self. 

“I always believe if you work really hard, you’re good at what you do, you’re passionate about what you do, then you’ll get there. I convey that to all my athletes, we have it embroidered on the shirts: A=I Actions equals Intentions. People say, ‘I want to play for England, Ireland, whatever’. Well, that’s really great, that’s intention. But, if you really want to do this then I have to be seeing your actions to achieve that.”

Would she go for other jobs such as England again? “I think you can’t ask others to go beyond their capabilities for what they believe if you’re not prepared to do that yourself,” she says, referring to her players. 

“I learnt, I burnt, I learnt,” she continues, “my players are doing that all the time. Just because I hit my head on that glass...  

“My players put themselves up for selection every week, and I if I don’t pick them, do they walk away? 

“It was tough, it was big-time tough, but that makes me more empathetic to them, because you can parallel your story to them. I can’t give up when something doesn’t happen.”

And she believes the ceiling will break, eventually. “The glass ceilings have got to come down at some point, either I will break them down or I prepare the way for the next person to break them down.

“Whether I break it or not, I think that I’ve chipped away at it, but when it is going to break, I don’t know.” 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by: Lara Miller

This extract was taken from issue 12 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.