Richmond Rugby

They were the pioneers in women’s rugby. They attracted the best players in the world. They won leagues and cups. They broke records. And then, it stopped. They lost a visionary coach, a squad of players, their place in the top flight, and then, eventually, their second and third teams. But the Richmond story isn’t over yet. Just ask Kapo.

It was an MK Dons moment for women’s club rugby. If Wimbledon had been Liverpool, and MK Dons had been Everton, effectively taking a whole squad and their very own Bill Shankly a short drive down the road. Perhaps, making it even worse was the fact the ‘Wimbledon’ in the story then had to face their plunderers months later, giving them a glimpse of what they once had.

Richmond is a rugby club with a few stories to tell – it’s got 160 years’ worth of them – but while the men’s side hasn’t always had the easiest of runs, some of those moments were arguably self-inflicted, victims as they were of the rash, hedonistic early-days professionalism. 

The women’s side of the club, however, have taken some killer blows in recent times, leaving them punch drunk but somehow still standing and fighting their way through the second tier of English rugby.

Bath away, Championship South 1. In the car park of the Athletic Ground, Laura Kapo is ticking off names as they wait to depart, accepting the usual fifteen minutes or so leeway given by every organiser of an away side, ever, in the history of rugby. “I think this is my twentieth season,” she tells us. “I came here in 2002 when I was sixteen and I’m 36 now.

“It was a very different landscape,” says Laura, the chair of Richmond women since 2016. “The club was really established, we had three teams and I was quite obviously the youngest person there, it was very full of adults.”

And by adults, she means proper adults. “I think the game was a lot more aged then, you had a lot of players in their mid to late-30s who had been playing for a long time, proper old-school girls, legendary names like Jenny Sheerin, Sue Dorrington, Debbie Francis, Eryka Wessell... there were dozens of internationals and not just England either. 

“We attracted internationals from across the world,” she continues. “Players from Australia, Japan, Canada, Italy and New Zealand: if they were in between World Cup years and wanted to advance their rugby, they purposely came to London, they purposely came to Richmond, because they thought this was the best place to come to advance their learnings.

“It was a really cool environment because it meant there were lots of ways of thinking, it wasn’t just the England way.

“We’ve always seen ourselves as a pioneering women’s club, we’ve always thought slightly differently, always leading from the front.”

Formed in 1986, Richmond were a club of firsts. The first women’s outfit to run two teams, then three; the first women’s side to dominate English club rugby – nine Premiership titles in 35 years, twelve national cups, four European championships; the first club side to be broadcast live on Sky Sports; an internationals board with 128 names, across sixteen countries. 

Such a force were Richmond in the 1990s, that in the 1995/96 campaign, the first team went unbeaten, without conceding a single point from mid-October to mid-March, and they did it with a side containing no fewer than seven international captains.

Beyond even that, what the early Richmond players did, went far beyond club rugby. “The important thing to remember is the pioneers,” says Laura, as the bus begins to make its way west towards Bath. “They weren’t just setting up an amazing establishment in Richmond, but the founding women – the likes of Carol Isherwood, Debs Griffin, Sue Dorrington – went on to set up and organise the first Women’s World Cup.

“And it wasn’t like today,” continues Laura. “If you were trying to organise a sevens competition today, you’d ping out a message on social media, send a few emails, WhatsApp a few people and, yes, there’d be a bit of admin, but that’s basically it.

“Imagine trying to organise a World Cup with twelve national teams, moving and mobilising them all at the same time to the same place, and doing it when emails didn’t exist and you relied on fax machines and snail mail?

“And then on top of that, there’s raising the funds for your own side, your own kit, and organising travel and accommodation for everybody. That’s just insane.

“Debs Griffin gave birth to her first child around then as well [five months before the tournament], but she had to just crack on with that; but that was the motivation needed to move the game forward. I think it’s a huge accolade for this club that we had people within our history that were willing to step up and put their head above the parapet and move mountains to make that change.

“And they stayed in the game too, still trying to make a difference.”

The Richmond that Laura joined had a first team full of internationals, and such was the volume of players who’d represented their countries, it was a deterrent for some. “It was almost like you knew not to come to Richmond because we were so established,” she says. “If you looked at the matchday fifteen, they were all internationals, so if you weren’t an international yet, it was almost as if you had to look somewhere else [for first team rugby]. That’s when the likes of Saracens, Wasps, Worcester and Bristol started to get more competitive.”

But with three teams, there was still space for anyone who arrived. Head to Richmond on any given Sunday and the place would be a hub of women’s rugby of all levels, spilling out of the club and into the town as the day wore on. 

Even as they won leagues and cups, they didn’t stand still. “We had a real shake-up in 2009, when our head coach Jock [Karen Findlay] started bringing in eighteen and nineteen-year-olds; she was a visionary really, doing something that wasn’t really the done thing. Up to that point it was more, ‘if you’ve not been playing senior rugby for at least ten years, you’re too young’.

“Everyone kind of expected us to fail that season, but we won the first team league and I think our second team won their league too, because the older players that had been pushed down strengthened them.”

Fast forward to 2015-2016, a season marked with more silverware in front of a live television audience. “That was our last successful season,” recalls Laura, “our first team won the Premiership final, it was live on Sky Sports, we beat Saracens [28-17].” It was their fifth title in seven years, in a season that also saw Lichfield defeat Worcester to take third place. “For years, it had always been Richmond and Saracens at the top of the game, and it always felt like a really tight fight. Every time that we played each other, both teams were out for blood. 

“Our second team also won their league championship, and our third team came second in their division. 

“I think we had about 75 players across the three teams,” says Laura, “and we had around eight coaches: a head coach, backs coach, forwards coach, two lead coaches for the second team, a lead for the third, S&C, video analysis and a general coach that floated across all sides.

“For the big games, the London derbies, even Thurrock and Aylesford, we’d play on the main pitch and get about 300 [spectators]. It doesn’t sound much by today’s standards, but back then it was a lot.”

Since the leagues began in 1990, Richmond had been competitive, winning their first in 1991. And while they were generally supported by those around them, Laura does feel there wasn’t always quite the credit where it was due from the men’s side of the club. “There were times when we won the title again – and I say it like that because we won it nine times in the whole 35 years – but we’d basically get a bit of a pat on the back, and it felt like they were saying, ‘okay, well done, now carry on’. And, sometimes, it did make you think, ‘well you guys are playing in National Two at the moment, what the fuck have you got to cheer about?’.

“So, sometimes, it would leave a bit of a bitter taste knowing the pressure the international players were under: working full-time jobs, still expected by England to train four, five times a week; taking unpaid time off to go to England camps...”

Laura, depending on the season, played between the sides. Today, she’s starting at prop, a few positions away from her peak years at inside centre. “I got old,” she says, “but it’s a way to extend your playing life.”

She remembers the games in rugby’s backwaters, as much as she does facing the big sides at the highest level. “I remember playing Ellingham & Ringwood in the middle of a valley for the thirds,” she says, “and there were cows and horses at the end of the pitch, without any kind of fencing or anything, and you just had to hope they didn’t come on. 

“We won that game 112-0 and I loved it, I scored four, so it was really good fun for us. And then, the next week, you might be playing for the seconds down at Thurrock and it would be an absolute bloodbath. 

“It didn’t matter what team I was playing for, as long as I was putting on the shirt.”

Who was putting on the shirt did change, quite dramatically, in the summer of 2016. “Harlequins had approached Richmond to ask if we would consider playing some of our home games at the Stoop, either as doubleheaders or a stand-alone game,” explains Laura. “It was because it meant they could make an exhibition of the women’s game and perhaps give it a bigger platform. 

“But Richmond, as a club, basically said, ‘we host, we give them a great stage here already, they play on the first team pitch, this is our home ground...’. And very much turned the offer down.”

Harlequins turned to the only other side within reasonably close proximity but not linked to a Premiership men’s side: Aylesford Bulls. “They wanted a head coach involved who would be really a visionary within the game, but also had knowledge of how to make a team successful and so Jock [Findlay] was approached to take over as head coach with Gary Street, who had also coached at Richmond, but had just stepped down from his role at England women’s head coach.”

Although still called Aylesford Bulls, the new residents of the Stoop wore the colours of Harlequins, and with the lure of the backing of a Premiership club, not to mention two of the best coaches in the women’s game, the Richmond players left in their droves. “They approached our successful winning team that year and asked those players if they would be interested in helping to escalate the game, take it to a new level, and take on the challenge of moving across the Aylesford club. We lost quite a significant number of players. Out of our title-winning squad of 25 from that season, I’d say we lost seventeen to Aylesford. 

“On top of that we also had one player retire through injury, and then three players that went back to their various countries.

“There were only about six of us left who had been involved in that squad in any way.”

What made it worse was the speed of it all. “This was all within months of us winning the league,” says Laura. “We won the Premiership in the January, we then went on to win the National Cup in March, then had a couple of sevens tournaments, our 30th anniversary in June and then a week after, the head coach handed in her notice.”

Scrambling to find a new coach, they managed to secure the services of former Richmond and London Scottish men’s DoR Brett Taylor, and a level four coach. “When we started pre-season, it was evident that a lot of players weren’t coming back,” says Laura, who was chair at the time. “I think out of all of them, only three or four had communicated saying that they weren’t coming back, to let us know they were going to Harlequins.

“I think the rest felt they didn’t need to give us the heads up, which is a little bit disappointing.”

Whereas previous seasons would have seen them blend in half a dozen new players to an already established squad, this campaign saw the opposite, as they attempted to make second-team players Premiership-ready in a matter of months. 

It made for an edgy encounter when Richmond and Aylesford met in the following league campaign. “I remember playing in a game against them and I was playing against all of my old friends that I hadn’t spoken to in ages,” recalls Laura. “The referee at one point said, ‘Harlequins ball’, and I just said, ‘they’re not fucking Harlequins – you guys are having an identity crisis, we don’t know who you are’ – it was so frustrating. 

“In fairness, the first 20-25 minutes we properly went to work, we held them to it and I think there was just one try in it, but we got to the second half of the game, they managed to sort of turn it around and there was maybe twenty points in it.”

Laura, who has now been on the committee for more than a decade, took it to heart. “From my position as chairwoman for our sport,” she says. “I think what was most disappointing to me was that of the players that left, there was a significant number, that didn’t have the courtesy to ring me as a team-mate, not even ring me as a chair. 

“Even as a team-mate,” she says, just to say ‘look Kaps, it’s just something I’ve got to try’. I like to think they knew me well enough, to know that I would just accept that. It’s being polite, but the fact they didn’t...”

Those left were in a flurry to pull together not just a first team, but three sides, although some wondered if they could even manage one. “I went to a board meeting where they were asking if I thought we would be in the position to even enter the Premiership that year. They asked, ‘do we pull the first team out of the league?’ Why would you do that? Why, for the first time in our 30-year history would you pull us out of the Premiership? I was like ‘no, we have to make this work’. 

“We really had to fight,” she adds. “It just became a constant fight to really hold on to our stake.

“I was adamant that we were going to get three teams out,” says Laura. “I didn’t want people to see us fail and it was more sticking your finger up. Everyone had been watching us, everyone was saying we wouldn’t be able to get three teams and were scrambling around for players. 

“I think that’s the sort of the depth of loyalty within the women’s game. A lot of the old girls, who knew a bit more of the story, knew a bit more of ins and outs of the mass migration of players and the head coach who’d left, came to play. 

“It was like ripping the soul out of Richmond,” she admits. “But we managed to get all three teams out at home that weekend. Nobody won, but everyone had a really good time. 

“And it was more that sort of celebration of that camaraderie that we needed to look after the club, to keep each other going.”

As with every club the world over, as the winter bit, players fell away and they struggled to get a third team out on the pitch. 

Problems also emerged on the coaching front with the resignation of Brett, and with the S&C effectively taking charge for the remainder of the campaign. “We’ve had a slow decline I think,” ponders Laura. “We ended up having to fold our third team. It was so disappointing because there had been so much time and energy gone into maintaining them for the ten years prior.”

Nonetheless, the first team stood up in the top flight in 2016-17, finishing a credible sixth. Aylesford Bulls won the title.

The coach stops at the services. It’s one of the good ones. Laura gets a message from the back of the bus with one of the players asking if she was ‘giving the most boring interview in the world’. There’s also a phone call with Rowena Burnfield, the Wasps and England lock, and one of those that stayed after the exodus. 

Back on board, the story continues. Just as Richmond had rebuilt their first team, the RFU began their consultations on the tender process for the new Premier 15s. Richmond made it into the new-look division, but others didn’t, including Lichfield. “Harlequins were also in, but as Harlequins, not Aylesford Bulls,” says Laura, “and I think that’s one of the biggest side effects of this, that they [Aylesford] effectively dissolved and didn’t have a women’s side anymore.

“They ended up dropping right way down and had to re-enter the league at the bottom. Now they’re coming back up. 

“But it would have been good to have had a side that was out there [to the east of London].” Instead, with Saracens north, Wasps west, and both Richmond and Harlequins south-west, there was a definite, and unwelcome, cluster of teams. 

There were still more records to break for Richmond in that first Premier 15s season, 2017-18, as their match, ironically against Harlequins at the Stoop in the March, drew a record crowd of 4,542, although they narrowly lost 14-12. The campaign ended with them finishing seventh (from ten). 

The 2019-20 season was Richmond’s final one in the Premiership, as after Covid ended the season prematurely at the end of February, the dice were rolled again with another tender process. Requirements had been tweaked with more S&C and medical requirements. “We ticked all the boxes,” says Laura. “I wanted to be optimistic. But I think if I was being truthful, you could only see it coming that we wouldn’t have been included. 

“There were all sorts of whispers going around anyway about how the RFU wanted the women’s Premiership clubs to be aligned to men’s Premiership clubs.”

Exeter Chiefs and Sale Sharks were brought in, replacing Richmond and Waterloo. 

Richmond had played their final Premiership match on 15 February, losing 7-42 to Saracens. “I remember being absolutely devastated,” recalls Laura. “I was hearing from all of these different people across the country, the coaches of Wasps, Bristol, Saracens... I even fielded a call from Sue Durrington, saying, ‘what the fuck’s happened?’.

“I think it kind of feels like just as we’re getting going again, when we’re making a little bit of progress, something else slaps us back down again.”

We pull into the ground. Lambridge, on London Road, the main road heading into Bath, is where the city’s professional men once trained before the Farleigh House days. The pitches are in good shape, but everything else is frayed around the edges. However, the squad is thriving, with upwards of 100 players, and now fielding three sides. A bid for Premiership rugby is surely on the cards, but a move away from Lambridge – or some serious work on what’s there – would need to happen first. 

Assistant coach and former player Terangi Maeva, shouts across to Laura. “The last time we played here Kapps, our bus broke down and we were here stuck for hours...”

“That was about nine years ago,” responds Laura, “we had to send a taxi to get beers...”

“Was that when we broke down and you fell asleep on a wall?” shouts a voice from the back of the bus.”

Half-Maori, half-Irish, but with an English accent, former powerlifter Terangi is another story, not least the one about her making her Premiership debut for Richmond, aged forty. “I was a powerlifter, so I could squat 140 kilos, which is basically the same an international rugby player anyway – so I figured being in the scrum for the first team was basically just doing a horizontal squat.

“I thought I was never going to get selected [for the first team] but that was fine, I’m happy to do my part, but ahead of one game, I started getting text messages saying ‘congratulations’. I just thought, ‘oh no’... they were putting this old girl out at forty.”

Now, aged 43, the ‘old girl’ is coaching, and giving the lowdown on Bath.

“It’s interesting in this division, because they’ve capped the Premiership squads [to forty] which means a lot of players have dropped down to here.

“The last time we played in the Championship, we had three teams, one in the Premiership, one in Champ 1 and Champ 2. 

“People think it’s Richmond coming, but a lot of clubs don’t realise how Premiership clubs came and picked a lot of our players out. We started this season with a very, very skeleton, group.

“But things are going to change,” she concedes. “I used to play for Rosslyn Park, and we had two sides and I never thought they’d ever fold but they have now.

“Bath are top three though,” says Terangi, reverting to her match preview. “They scored more than fifty points last week [17-50, away to Reading].

“The number 12 likes to kick, number 13 comes up fast in defence, and the 10 has an amazing boot and has been here as long as I can remember...

“We’re quite a new team, we’re still building on things, the players are still learning how to play with each other and working on the different relationships, you know?”

Richmond folded their seconds before this season began. Losing their place in the Premier 15s also meant the closure of the centre of excellence, designed to develop players aged sixteen to eighteen. “We got to a point, pre-covid [and pre-tender], where both of our teams were really established, we had quite a few younger ones coming through,” says Laura, picking up the story again. “We had a crop of centre-of-excellence girls that were coming of age and we were also looking, at the time, to absorb the London Scottish set up into the Richmond set-up. We were going to have a really healthy selection of girls,” she concludes, “but then Covid hit in March 2020, and all of that went to shit.”

Today’s side is a mixed bag: the senior academy players that were ready to play rugby; experienced players balancing work and rugby; and newcomers from trimmed development squads. “We’ve only just withdrawn the second team from the league,” says Laura. “But there’s massive knock-on effects of covid – in the last eighteen months we’ve lost 59 players that had been regularly coming to training.

“We lost seven or eight players just to rugby league alone, because the rugby league carried on when rugby union stopped.”

This division, Championship South 1, has taken them a “bit by surprise”, admits Laura, and they’re winning roughly the same as they’re losing [six wins, five defeats and a draw before today], although they lost 8-28 to Bath at home. 

Lydia MacDonald, sister of England scrum-half Claudia, is on the bench today, having joined from Wasps. “I’d only played a couple of friendlies and the development team was cut,” she explains, “but it’s lovely here, the coaching set-up is good, and if you screw up, they’re like, ‘okay, let’s fix it’, you don’t get hounded or shouty, which is very nice, and different.”

Claudia has also become a regular attendee. “She watches every game, she’s my driving factor,” says Lydia. “She comes along and says, ‘well, you’re not quite me are you?’. 

“But we’re best friends,” she concludes, “very close, very similar, but different.”

Bahamas-born captain and fly-half Courtney Treco is one the senior players enjoying the youthfulness of the current first team. “It’s nice to be around a lot of new young players that are looking to push on, and then potentially move into the Premier when they’re ready.

“It’s a good reset,” she says of the new side. “So disappointing in some ways, but it’s given us the opportunity to focus on developing the women’s section rather than fighting to stay in the Prem.”

The game kicks off. Richmond look dangerous every time they get the ball, none more so than 21-year-old centre Gabby Spencer, who moved to the club from London Scottish. She breaks the line with every charge, and then attacks the breakdown like a flanker, ripping balls left, right and centre. 

Bath take the lead against the run of play, and never relinquish it, despite a try from Laura. In the dying moments, Richmond pound the home side’s line for a last-minute match-winner, but running into the Bath’s pack is giving them little reward. They lose 14-8, but everyone we speak to post-match is positive. “We’re getting there,” says Gabby. “I think the chemistry on the pitch today was unmatched compared to all the other games I’ve played. So yeah, it’s getting there. Anyone that watched it could see we should’ve won. 

“I think the first five minutes showcases the game, and we had seven or eight opportunities from the start.”

Not shy about her career plan, the landscape architecture student has big rugby ambitions. “I’ll probably stay at the club for a bit longer, but I would love to go further,” she says. “England hopefully, but we’ll just see how it goes.”

Fergus McCarthy was among those seeing they should’ve won; he nearly always is, supporting daughter and no.8 Sam – whose rugby life began at Richmond, but took her to Harlequins, before she returned once more. “My dad has come to almost every game I’ve ever played,” she says. “He couldn’t come a couple of weeks ago because he had to quarantine, and he called me crying, saying, ‘I want to come to the game’. 

“That’s probably the best we played all season,” she says, agreeing with Gabby. “We could’ve won it.”

Sam joined Richmond at eighteen. “It was the best club in the country, in most countries to be honest with you,” she says. “It’s sad that they aren’t in the Premiership anymore.

“I stayed with Richmond at first because I love the club, it’s family and I felt a huge sense of loyalty.

“And when I did move [after a second change in coaches], I spoke to everyone before I made the decision, and every single person said, ‘you’re making the right decision for you, do it’.”

When work and injuries combined to make her consider retiring, she opted instead to move back home. “I didn’t want to come down [to this division] and it be really awful rugby and a real struggle, but it’s not, it’s really good,” she says. “There’s a lot of quality players, who could play a higher level if they wanted to, but I think some just don’t want to play with that pressure.”

Sam intends on playing for as long as ‘her body holds up’, but admits it’s tough not seeing Richmond at the top table. “I was really emotional when they didn’t get back into the Premier 15s,” she says. “I didn’t leave to just want to see them fail, I left purely for personal reasons, but it makes me really sad that they’re not in there anymore. 

“I’m quite emotional talking about it,” she admits, “because I think there’s so much history with Richmond, so many international players have come through for England and other countries.

“Now I think we’ve just got to build to do the best that we can to go as far as we can. Because a lot of that is ultimately out of our hands, we don’t make that decision.”

After showers, food and beers, the team return to the bus. Mark Cadogan, the head coach, arrived in 2020, having worked previously with Harlequins women, the club he still works for as a community coach. “Bath are second place, and we ran them close,” he says, echoing his players. “I think it’s our best performance we’ve had to date.

“There are teams in the lower end of the Premiership that, on a given day, we’d give then a good run for their money.”

He repeats the stats Laura gave us on the journey here, the players lost, and explains how he’s written to the RFU, giving the names of all 59 and why they’ve left, and asking what they intend to do about the situation. “For the tender process only about 25% of what happens on-field goes towards it,” he says. “And we’re actually putting some solid foundations in now, so that – if we are in a place where we can actually realistically rebid the next cycle – then we would be competitive on the pitch.

“But first, we need to get sustainable and field two matchday squads.

“The new cycle is coming up fairly shortly and we’re not ready for that, but maybe the next one.”

Mark reckons he’s got around 44 players in and around the squad – the average amount for fielding a regular first XV. And the girls’ section is now up and running, hoping to develop girls across the age grades primed for top-level rugby. 

This, combined with the Richmond name, and even the simple fact that they still exist – unlike other clubs, who have fallen by the wayside – is enough to give hope that we’re still not done with seeing the club at the sharp end of the game. 

When that happens, Laura will be there. “I don’t want to go through it again as a player, I definitely think I’ve reached that cap of being too old,” she says. “But I want to make sure that if we do go through it, we’re not just ticking the boxes, but adding new ones and helping to raise the bar and setting expectations and standards really high.

“If we’re not there [in the Premier 15s], I think what we want to do is provide competitive rugby for all,” she continues. 

The Richmond name, she says, still carries weight and brings players in, from near and far. 

Staying positive can be a challenge, especially with everything that has been thrown at Richmond, once the perfect vision of a women’s rugby club – and still the model club, in every sense. How does Laura feel about everything? “I think I’m probably sad,” she admits. “I came into the club at sixteen and I hugely benefited from the superior setup that Richmond had. 

“Everyone was jealous of Richmond,” she continues. “We used to get clubs coming to us amazed that we were even able to play on the first team pitch. Other clubs were shunted out back somewhere, and had tiny changing rooms, whereas we had our own dedicated physio for the women’s team. 

“Even the food was far superior than everyone else’s, with other sides getting watered down pasta; we were always envied by other clubs. 

“I feel sad that when I came in everything was so established and successful and made me the player I am now [and now it isn’t the same]. 

“I want the same for these younger players coming through,” she adds. “We do have pockets of experience, but there isn’t necessarily that high level experience and we’re now getting to a point where because of age, some of us, myself included, are starting to potentially retire, so they won’t have that experience on the pitch with them.

“But,” she adds, “I’m going to always stay involved, and others will too, even if we’re not on the pitch. When you give so much free time to rugby, walking away from it altogether just isn’t possible, not without having a heart of stone.  

“And you need female role models, those that have been there and done it before, it has to be relatable to the players. It’s great that we have guys that are committed to the women’s game, but if I look at our coaching team, what do they have in common with an eighteen-year-old girl? 

“Female coaches and officials can relate better to young girls coming through about different pressures and emotions, and that’s important, that’s what I want to be able to put back.”

And success on the pitch? “It’s almost like when you hit bottom, there’s only one way to go,” she says. “Although we’ve not hit rock bottom, I think there’s an attraction to people in getting us back up there. 

“We might not be as successful as we once were, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t be there again.” 

Story by  Alex Mead

Pictures by  Danté Kim

This extract was taken from issue 17 of Rugby.
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