Rocky Clark

Rocky Clark wasn’t always on the right path. A ‘fat knacker’ in danger of being arrested was instead ‘guilted’ onto a rugby path paved with 137 caps and a World Cup win. 

The rolling mauls kept coming, to the point where it was impossible to see where one player ended and the other began, seemingly stretching far beyond the physical sum of their parts, slowly making a trench through the pitch. Relentless pick-up-and-go,  pick-up-and-go, pick-up-and-go... Henley were grinding down the star-studded Saracens, the only way they knew how. At least, the only way a side that consisted of more than one third props knew how. “That was one of the best games ever played in club rugby,” says Rocky Clark, when we meet the 137-cap England international. “I was playing for Henley, we had six props playing in the pack. I was number eight. 

“And, bear in mind, this is the season where we’ve gone into the Prem and we’re getting absolutely hammered, 100-0, every week. On top of that, we were on the verge of folding and Carol Isherwood, our coach at the time, said before the game, ‘right, we’ll play this game and then we’ll have a big planning meeting and whatnot and see what to do next...

“Basically, all season we’d just had twelve or thirteen core players, so we were always having to beg, steal and borrow players to get the game on. And most of the time we’d only have one or two subs.

“Nolli [Danielle Waterman] was scrum-half, I was eight,” continues Rocky, getting back to the game, “and basically Nolli would just pass the ball to me every time and I just ran and ran and ran, either that or pick and go, the backs never really got it. Nolli was just always screaming at me to carry and carry – I reckon I did about thirty or more carries that day. And in the end we got over from a tap penalty and won, 5-0, I think, or maybe 8-0, either way it was tight.”

Until Sarah Hunter finally chased her caps total down before retiring this year, for so long, Rocky was the most-capped England player of all time. A trailblazer whose career spans the greatest transition in women’s rugby history, from park rugby and questionable skillset to 60,000 Twickenham crowds, pro players and a style of ball-in-play rugby that the entire game would do well to take note of. 

We meet in her favourite coffee shop in Newport Pagnell, which is a good half hour or so from where she spends most of working life in Bedford, either coaching or doing fitness sessions, but she knows her caffeine and it fuels a chat through her quarter of a century of rugby. “I started at Beaconsfield when I was fifteen,” she says. “Then I went to Henley at sixteen, and I could play adults then, which was mental as you were getting your head kicked in. Then I played at Clifton, Blaydon, Worcester, Wasps, Saracens and now Leicester, I think that’s it. You could get a Premiership out of the teams I’ve played for.”

And before rugby? “I was just a bit of a fat knacker waddling around pitches,” she says, brutally honest as ever. “I was in all the sports teams but we didn’t have that many sporty girls. Netball, basketball, football, hockey, I even tried tennis – I was terrible at it but, you know, I was keen. My friend dragged me along to a rugby session, basically guilting me into it by saying they wouldn’t be able to play because they didn’t have numbers. I did two training sessions played the game and absolutely loved it and that changed the course of my life forever.”

If she hadn’t? “I’d have probably got arrested and been twenty stone,” she says, succinctly. “I possibly followed the wrong crowd a bit, and then rugby just gave me that real focus on my sport and to not hang around with the wrong crowd.”

Only fully professional for eight months of her rugby career – plus the semi-pro set-up in the lead up to World Cups, where, she tells us, they got “about five grand” – Rocky has made ends meet working as personal trainer, coach and, certainly in the early days, some less rugby-driven jobs. “I worked in some electrical warehouse putting wires together,” she says, “and I’ve done loads of jobs in different warehouses and things, but the main stuff was PT and coaching.”

The Henley game stands out for Rocky, perhaps because she spent so long in a dominant England side that the underdog moments are particularly special. Club rugby when she began at the turn of the millennium was very different. “There was nobody watching, you were out in the backfield,” she says. “You had the rubbish changing rooms, the standard was light years away. It was really about much ‘bigger’ forwards – girthier perhaps – and the game relied upon setpiece. Back then, a lot of people [forwards] were there because all they did was scrum and lineout, whereas I was one of the new generation coming through that like carrying and handling as well as the set piece.”

The lack of glamour in the club game, was reflected in the international game as well. “We had hardly anyone watching,” she says of early England caps. “I remember going to one pitch in the arse-end of Wales, and it was absolutely hammering it down. There were huge puddles, and I did wonder whether I might survive the game – am I going to drown at the bottom of the ruck? The standard of the pitch was horrific, massive divots, puddles, it was basically like a bog.”

Even when they went to big grounds, it felt as if they were only open in name. “Today, they’ll have the food vans, bars and coffee places, but then if you were ever allowed in a stadium, you’d have six people on security and nothing else, with about two hundred people watching.”

As for coverage, it was old school. “I remember our results would go up on Teletext and mum used to see them on that,” she recalls. “And that used to be a big thing, especially when I got my first cap in 2003...”

While Rocky has always lived in the Bucks area, never too far from where she was born in High Wycombe – although she bravely moved to Bedfordshire two years ago – she found her rugby place way out west. “I was at Worcester for eight years, that was my real home,” she says. “I absolutely loved playing there – my best mate Ceri Large, who I played with at England, was there – and it was just a really good crack. It was just such a good tight team and that’s also the first team that won the premiership outside of London.”

Worcester won the title in 2012-13, breaking a London stranglehold that had seen Wasps (three times), Saracens (four) and Richmond (three) dominate the club game. “You can’t you just rely on having good players, having that team culture really makes people put in that extra graft, that extra bit, to get that extra one per cent,” she says. “And I think that was the real difference for us how tight we were, how we could bring the best out of people.”

Never leaving her home county, after almost a decade of Rocky making the five-hour round trip twice a week, she moved to Wasps. “The commute was getting hard, some of the other people had left and then I had the opportunity to be coached by Giselle [Mather] at Wasps, and I knew some of the other girls.
So I just thought, ‘maybe it was time to be closer and get coached by Giselle’.”

Rocky played in five Rugby World Cups, winning one in 2014. Fifteen years and 137 caps on from her 2003 debut against Canada, made her a record-breaker in the men’s and women’s game when she retired from international rugby in 2018. Five years may have passed, but the impact is still there. “It’s still pretty fresh, still pretty raw,” she admits. “It does still hurt,” she repeats. “The break in covid almost felt like retirement hadn’t happened because there was two years of not a lot going on, so I wasn’t really missing out.

“If you lose somebody you have those anniversaries that are really tough to get through, the first ones, the first Christmas, the first birthday, and it’s the same with rugby – the first World Cup, the first Six Nations, the first 60,000-thing at Twickenham. 

“But what is nice now is that the pioneers are getting recognition, that the opportunities for me off the pitch are increasing and I’m just trying to be the best version of me to put the game on the front foot I guess...

“I think it was always going to hurt whenever I retired, whether it was 35, 37 or 30,” she continues. “And I never realised how hard it was for people to retire and still be involved in the game. I always thought it was weird that x player didn’t come and watch. And now I completely understand because it is too painful. I still talk to people who retired fifteen years ago and they still find it hard to do that.

“But, you know, it has been tough to be on the other side so that’s why I really enjoy working at internationals, that gives me a purpose.”

Rocky is full of purpose today. Having balanced a role with playing and coaching at Saracens – who she joined from Wasps after her England retirement – she’s now part of the new Leicester Tigers team set-up. After a season in which injury limited her to a handful of games, even now, aged 42, she’s not hanging her boots up yet. “I said to Leicester, ‘if you want me... then I’ll be your injury cover’,” she says, knowing full well they will. “I would like to play a last game in the Prem again. I’ve played for Sarries this year, only one game – I came back from a hamstring rupture, played, then in training got concussed, came back after Christmas and then just played three or four games for OAs (Old Albanians).”

She then got a call to coach in Hong Kong at the tens. “I got a call from Terry Sands – who runs the Samurai sides – saying, ‘do you want to be the forwards coach?’, and I said, ‘yeah, great, brilliant’. Then, a week later, he messaged said, ‘PS, we’re gonna put you down on the bench, because they need front row’.”

Naturally, she went and played in every game, starting two. “I absolutely loved it, it was refreshing to know that I still have something to offer around the park,” she says. “At one stage, I was carrying the ball and I had like four people hanging off me and that was euphoric, it gave me that little taste that made me think, ‘yeah there’s still a little bit of life there’.”

Today, Rocky is a regular on our screens, and winning plaudits for her insightful words on the games she covers. “I would say I’m more famous now than I was as a rugby player,” she admits. “Which is just ludicrous given that I played 137 times, but I’m very thankful that I’m still relevant and my name is still out there to be, you know, associated with women’s rugby and for people to know me.”

But it hasn’t always been like that. In the aftermath of her retirement, she struggled with not being part of the Red Roses, but also what the future held. “I was frustrated,” she admits.  “I’d lost my purpose, I’d lost the reason I woke up for every day, and so I struggled mentally. 

“And, you know,” adds Rocky, “you’d also see other people getting opportunities within the media and in coaching jobs which were very few and far between – I think they just always used the same people. I don’t think there was enough media coverage, or support/sponsorship for the women’s game, but that has changed now, it’s snowballed... 

“Now,” continues Rocky, “there’s a lot more opportunities because there’s a lot more demand for the women’s game and there’s space for a lot more females to be coaches, referees, pundits, commentators. Look at Joy Neville being one of the female TMOs for the men’s World Cup – we’re breaking glass ceilings all the time.”

The strain of retirement was also felt in her marriage, which was to someone also ensconced within rugby. “The breakup was difficult because there was so much crossover,” she says. “I mean, I’ve always been very professional regardless of what was going on at home, you’d never know if anything was going on.”

While the challenges are obvious, she also recognises the empathy that comes from that sort of partnership. “You have the benefits of being able to experience the same things, like win a World Cup together and play for the same team, but then you get the shit side where our worlds are interlinked,” she says. 

“It [the breakup] coincided with retiring, and that’s probably why I still find it painful because I associate all those really shit memories [from that time] with things that happened in my relationship too. 

“We just couldn’t see the other side and wanted different things,” she concludes.

Rugby has been everything to Rocky, and now she’s found balance – well, a bit. “It was one hundred per cent,” she says, “now it’s probably seventy-five, but I think there’s a much healthier balance. I find time to do other things that are interesting, and other friends and quite often I won’t speak about rugby when I go out on a night out with friends and stuff...”

You have non-rugby friends? “I have a handful,” she laughs. “I don’t want to talk shop all day and that’s where I think I went wrong in my last relationship because that’s what it ended up being, everything was rugby.”

The past few years have been about finding her place in the world. “I’m still not where I would like to be. I want to feel more settled,” she says. “I think in the last few years, I’ve been striving to find my purpose after having been an England player for so long.”

And now what is it? “Pundit, coach, friend, dog mum?” she laughs. “I’ve been looking for what gives me that buzz for playing. You need that fix. I now understand why some people turn to drugs, alcohol, betting. I’ve turned to trying lots of new things...”

In fairness, she’s clearly settled on punditry and coaching – the dog mum is unpaid. In coaching she’s already making her mark, helping men’s side Chesham to promotion as the only side in the pyramid coached by women, and then working with Saracens and now Leicester, in addition to coaching the Bucks women’s county side, whom she led to a Twickenham final this year, losing 15-25 to Lancashire.  “I want to keep a foot in the door with coaching  [she’s contracted to a day a week at Tigers] and learn the behind-the-scenes stuff in coaching because I’ve got the knowledge,” she says. “I’m a level four coach, so that bit’s fine, but it’s the analysis, just the admin I guess, of being an elite coach. I feel I need to develop that and be nurtured to be the best I can be with my coaching.”

Behind the mic, she’s developing fast. “I don’t just want to be there because they’re paying lip service and having a female commentator,” she says. “I actually want to be there because I’m the best commentator.

“I’m still really working my way up to get as many [gigs] as I can,” she says. “I’m really present on social media and I’m contacting people and I’m trying to put my hand up, I know I’m just waiting for that big break.”

Is she worried about the negativity that seems to often come the way of female pundits covering male sports? “I remember like occasionally getting the odd negative thing as a player and you would go over and over and over it continuously and you get defensive or you either reply or you wouldn’t, and you just let it beat you up,” she says. “Some people can be keyboard warriors and hide behind screens and write nasty things, but you’re always going to have that, and while I think it’s really important to show vulnerability, also believe in yourself.

“For example, there’s coaches that have thought somebody couldn’t reach international level, and those players haven’t given up, they’ve still gone and carried on and reached the highest level. Just because one coach maybe doesn’t like you, you’ve still got to believe in yourself. 

“If I let every little negative thing take me down then I wouldn’t get anywhere.

“The other option is you just don’t look at any of that negative stuff and you just carry on, because if you look at women’s football when the first female pundits came in and they got absolutely annihilated. 

“And I know Nolli’s had a few negative comments,” she continues, “and I think the first time you probably hear those it probably hurts, but you’ve got to brush it off and keep going and believe in what you do. Because whatever you do, you’re never going to get one hundred per cent of people liking or respecting you, but as long as you’ve got the majority of the room, you’re doing great.”

As she intends on eking out every playing opportunity she gets – it would be of no surprise to see a septuagenarian Rocky lacing up her boots to break another record in three decades time. And one interesting side note to her longevity is how the changing room has evolved, especially when she finds herself now sharing with players young enough to be her kids. “Yeah, it’s weird,” she says. “It’s noticeably different. I remember one of my first games for OAs, and there’s these kids dancing and just being real proper kids with their chat, too loud, too energetic I guess...

“Think of me like an old dog with a load of puppies jumping around,” she says. “You can start off playing with the puppies and then, occasionally, snap, it gets too much, and I just go and have a little bit of space.”

The ‘old dog’ obviously has plenty of rugby life left, on and off the field, but how does she look back on the career so far? “I’m hugely...” she begins, stopping. “Well, should I be grateful for something that I’ve worked so fucking hard at? 

“Yeah, I probably am,” she concedes. “For the opportunities I’ve had, to the people I’ve met, the coaches, the family that have supported me, yeah, I’m hugely grateful. 

“Would I swap the fifteen years I had from 2003 to 2018, to now?” she asks. “Well, the money would have been nice, and maybe the recognition too, but to see the game grow and evolve as it has through my career, and to be a part of making history and paving the way, I don’t think you can put a price on that.”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by  Michael Leckie

This extract was taken from issue 22 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.