Sarah Hunter

At a freshers’ fair sometime in the early 2000s, future England captain Sarah Hunter attempted to coax girls into playing for her uni side with the hope of getting a half-decent XV together. Now, 123 caps, three Rugby World Cups, an MBE, and a good chunk of two decades later, it’s fair to say both Sarah and Loughborough University are doing okay. 

The Powerbase Gym at Loughborough University is a thing of beauty. A cardio mezzanine of watt bikes, treadmills and rowing machines overlooks a Disneyland for elite athletes, home to myriad brightly coloured ‘tin’, Olympic lifting platforms, a sprint track and usually densely populated by perfectly formed young folk from all corners of the sporting diaspora. 

Through this, masked England rugby captain Sarah Hunter MBE hobbles on her crutches. She hopes to be free of them in a few weeks when she’s allowed to return to the bosom of her Loughborough Lightning team, after a hamstring injury curtailed her international campaign last October. “Friday morning and
this place is usually heaving,” she says, as we pass empty stations. “To have only one or two people around is unheard of, it’s usually all hustle and bustle. There’s still elite athletes training, we’ve got some British athletes, British swimmers, British triathletes, England netballers are here and some of the Lightning netballers and cricket players too. There’s a few other elite athletes tied to different professional teams, but not many. 

“We’re actually very fortunate that women’s rugby has been given the green light to carry on,” she adds, as we reach the empty clubroom for our socially distanced shoot. 

Newcastle-born Sarah first arrived at Loughborough to study as a teenager. “It’s completely different now,” she says, “we didn’t have a plastic pitch, it was quite long grass with a slope to it, and the women’s programme – not that it was token, but there wasn’t a pathway. Only a few of us came here having played rugby, so we’d have to generate players at the freshers’ fair, persuading people from other sports to come and try rugby.

“When I came back [in 2017, to play for Lightning], I was coach of the women’s programme and there were hundreds turning up to play. Even away from Lightning, we’ve got two women’s sides and the potential for a third, which was something we certainly never had when I was here.

“Although we as Lightning are in the Premiership, we’re all ‘one clubbers’ under our DoR Rhys [Edwards] with a joined-up approach; he oversees the whole women’s programme, so it’s an aligned pathway. You can come here at eighteen and have the opportunity to train alongside international athletes and play Premiership rugby, that’s such an incentive to be involved in the game now.”

As a student, to find her place in Premiership rugby, the No.8 had to join Lichfield, a club that helped gain her England recognition and a good chunk of her 123 caps during a decade-long stint with the club. “The reason I didn’t go home to Newcastle [after graduation] was to stay and play for Lichfield, I loved it there,” she says. “I found work in the Midlands area and the only reason I left was because I got a job in Bath and just couldn’t commute from Bath to Lichfield. It was a tough decision, but it just wasn’t sustainable.”

Ever since their entry into the Premier15s – then sponsored by Tyrrells, now Allianz – Lightning have been competitive, with a side built around Katy Daley-Mclean (now at Sale), Emily Scarratt, and Sarah, helping them to a top-five spot on every occasion. At the time of writing, they lie second, splitting the two dominant forces of women’s club rugby. “You look at Saracens and Harlequins,” she begins, “the support they have, the set-ups, and understand why people want to go there. What clubs outside have to do is work hard to show that you can still develop and progress. 

“Take Worcester for instance, they’re a good example of being able to move in that direction. Look at their first three years [P18, D1, L17; P18, W2, L16; P12, W3, L9], it wasn’t the greatest, but now look at some of the players they have: they’ve got [former England captain] Jo Yapp and they’re one of the teams saying, ‘we can offer a programme that can develop and enhance you without going to a London team’. 

“So hopefully we’ll see a bit more of a spread [of talent],” she adds, referencing the high percentage of England players in the capital. “Look at the international players coming over now, they are being distributed all over the country – they are seeing what other people have to offer, and it’s not just straight to London, hopefully that will become the norm as years go by.

“It has to really,” she admits, “clubs are there or thereabouts in terms of beating these sides, but the pressure is on us to do something about it and win a title, hopefully this year...” 

When we meet, a second lockdown trend has emerged on social media regarding women’s rugby. After #IAmEnough trended last year following Canterbury’s ill-advised use of models to launch the new Ireland kit, #ICare hit timelines after a women’s Six Nations announcement sparked a tranche of sexist trolling. Sarah lauds the impact it had, in particular getting the likes of Clare Balding involved in the debate – as she highlighted the excellent column from Ampthill’s Charlie Beckett, also brother to England and Harlequins’ Sarah. “Quite often people speak up and no change comes off it,” she says. “Canterbury got it wrong, but when we had Canterbury we were always included, so I don’t know where it went wrong. 

“But it did and then they changed it, and I think that’s the real plus, because it highlighted to the likes of Nike and Umbro that, if ever they were going to do the same thing, they definitely can’t now.”

While supporting these campaigns may have been straightforward, often social media represents an awkward challenge for Sarah. “I’m rubbish on social media, I always forget to do stuff, I’ll write half a post and then get distracted and forget to send it,” she says. “It’s also really difficult to comment sometimes, there’s been a couple of times when I’ve had to ask the media manger, ‘what’s our stand on this?’ As a current player, and current captain, you’ve got an opinion, but what can you say that allows you to voice your opinion but not get you into trouble? It can be quite difficult at times. 

“Even if you don’t agree, you’re sometimes in quite a difficult position around what to say, and how you say it, because if you get it wrong that’s it, you’re either done for by social media, or your club, or England – it almost feels like you can’t win, so you say nothing.”

There is some disappointment in the fact the two campaigns even had to happen. “With both campaigns it’s almost frustrating that it’s those things that get the attention of the game,” she says, “it’s a shame they didn’t have that much interest when there was a club game, or when someone did something great. We want to be trending because of an amazing bit of skill, whereas we genuinely trend on social media when it’s a news-worthy story like that, because of the injustice and inequality. 

“One day it’d be great if that doesn’t happen, and we’re trending because of Scazza’s drop-kick from the 50-metre line, do you know what I mean? That would be good.”

We hobble Sarah back through the Powerbase Gym and out onto the Loughborough Lighting rugby pitch, currently being used by a smattering of young athletes to stretch their legs. “When I first came back it made me feel old,” she says of her life among the students, “it was ten years since I graduated and it had changed so much, even the way students talked about what they did Wednesday nights after games, where they went, that made me feel old too. And now we’ve got girls in our team who, legally, I’m old enough to be their mum, which is scary too.

“It keeps you young though,” she acknowledges, “being at university surrounded by young people probably keeps you quite refreshed and energised – they have this energy about them, and I’ve got to come to the party with that too. Otherwise, I’ll get left behind, or get called the old person in the corner or Victor Meldrew – even that reference shows my age.”

Randomly, we briefly segue onto other nostalgia. “We went to Butlins for Claire Allan’s retirement and Five were playing, it was a 90s weekend,” she says, “but there was only three of them. It was brilliant, but you were almost embarrassed for them still trying to be this band in their 40s.”

Back on rugby topics. We turn to the Allianz Premier15s, a more professional league than ever, but with the majority of players still working a full-time job elsewhere, Sarah feels it has to change to progress. “We still have to train on Tuesday and Thursday evenings,” she says, “if we don’t, we don’t get the people we need and want at training. There’s a real need for the league to go professional or at least semi-professional, but how do you do that? 

“You need more investment and at this moment in time, that’s going to be very difficult, and we need to have a fanbase too,” she says. “We are getting more people to the games, regulars that have no link to the people playing in the game, which is brilliant. 

“Ultimately for the game to go forward, it’s going to come down to the clubs investing in themselves, especially when you look at the RFU and them not having games or income.

“I don’t think it should be expected that we rely on one source of funding,” continues Sarah, “so I think it would be good to see clubs trying to work out how they do generate their own income, whether that’s matchday experience – they need to make that something – or having more games streamed. Ultimately a terrestrial broadcaster is key to making it truly out there and making it more visible for people. Then, they’re more likely to want to turn up and come and support games.”

Lightning do have their first set of ‘ultras’ though. “We’ve got a family that come to every home game from Yorkshire,” explains Sarah. “They went to Doncaster for an England game one year and they were like, ‘right, brilliant, we want to support a Premiership team’, so they decided to travel to their nearest club and that was us. 

“They bought all the scarves, shirts, they turn up in purple and pink every week, and when we had the semi-final, there was a fan bus from here and they came down here to get on it. We need more people like that, asking, ‘right we want to support a women’s team, how do we do it’.”

When women’s football and cricket have made such huge strides in recent sides, does she think women’s rugby has kept pace in the same way. “It’s hard to say,” she admits, “it has kept up in some degree. England got professional contracts in 2019, look at the amount of people that came to Sandy Park (10,545) and at The Stoop (10,974). So it has developed, but then that’s just 28 players in the league. 

“I think the Premier 15s has improved and got better and is a distinct improvement from before the inception of Premier 15s, but then I guess you look at some of the things other sports are doing and you do have to ask, ‘is there more we can do?’. 

“Covid hasn’t helped,” says Sarah. “But I’d be interested to speak to the FA, to see how they transitioned it from where it was, to how it is now. Was it just they’ve aligned their teams? Is it just that football’s always had more money or is there more to it?”

She wants to be involved in trying to find the answers too. “It’s not that I’m going to stop playing anytime soon, but when you do get to my age you do start to think, well, I’m not going to be playing for another five years and I’m passionate and adamant I want to stay in the women’s game in some shape or form, to keep the progression going. 

“I did talk recently about the feasibility of selling out Twickenham, and I’m not sure it’s going to happen when I’m still playing, but I do think it is possible. I’ve seen it go from one man and his dog watching to hundreds at club games and thousands at internationals. Now we need to work out exactly what we have to do to take the game to a different place in five or ten years.”

Following the football model is one idea, but there remain question marks over how integrated some of the clubs in the Allianz Premier 15s are. Sarah’s obviously far too diplomatic to highlight any examples on the negative side, but knows the men’s side can help breed success with the women. “Saracens are double Premiership and European champions, what things did they learn that can help their women’s side?” she asks, “And at the end of the day Saracens, Harlequins, all of them, were amateur once so how can they help the women’s game become professional, also in terms of the players learning and developing.”

More meandering chat leads us to the topic of former England and Lightning team-mate Katy Daley-Mclean, recently retired to spend more time with her young family.  “I’d love to have a family,” she says. “But everyone’s different. Katy [Daley-Mclean] had Addie during her playing career, Marlie [Packer] has just had a baby [Oliver], and I think everyone is very different in what they want, but I think in my head I wouldn’t want family while still playing, purely because of the demand, knowing what it takes to be an international player, especially at this stage of my career. 

“I’m not sure that afterwards, you’d be able to get back, they’d want you back and that might have taken me over. If I was younger, it was the right time and place to do it, it would be very different.”

A positive knock-on effect of professional women’s rugby has been the ability of players to make big life choices when they want to rather than when the rugby career dictates. “It [having a baby] would have been even harder when we weren’t full-time,” she says, “because having a full-time job and then having to cope with the demands of rugby makes it impossible. 

“Emma Leyland (Croker) did it back before the 2014 World Cup and she came back in something ridiculous, like twelve weeks later, so it is doable but that was unusual. 

“The Kiwis tend to have players that have children. Jess Ennis did it, but individual sport is very different to team, it’s perhaps easier to manage training around a baby. 

“I think more people will think about it now, is my gut instinct,” she continues, “not that I know, but I think now people have started to do it, they’ll see it as possible, now we’re on full-time contracts, we’re employed, it’ll make people more at ease to have children and still be able to play. Whereas beforehand we weren’t contracted so it was more difficult, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more England babies. 

“Not in the near future with the World Cup though,” she quickly adds, “but maybe in the years to come. It does become be a consideration now, whereas before I think it genuinely hasn’t been [considered] in the squad, and I’ve been in it for a long time. In fact, until Katy and Marlie, everybody only had children once they’d retired.”

Amid the chaos of Covid, much like the British & Irish Lions, it’s been easy to forget that this is a Rugby World Cup year. “At least it’s in New Zealand, where it seems they’re living normal lives,” she says. “From all the noise I’m hearing, they’re fully gung-ho with the planning and organising, so it’s all going ahead, we’ve just got to believe that until we know any different. 

“I can’t see them changing any of the restrictions, so it’ll be sad to not have your friends and family go and I can’t imagine there’s going to be many Kiwis down there wanting to support England.

“But,” she adds, “this is the time we’re living in, so we’ve got to adapt. The preparation will be interesting though, we’ve still got to have warm-up games, there’s still sides that haven’t qualified, so who knows how that’s going to happen? 

“It’s in the best country it could be in though, and as the time draws closer, we have the Six Nations, then we’re into pre-tournament warm-up and it’ll hit home that it’s the World Cup.

No doubts it’ll happen? “I’m hoping it’s this year, otherwise I’ve got to keep playing,” she laughs, quickly adding, “joke.”

The World Cup will be her fourth, and even she admits, her last. “God yeah, I think, going back to the retirement question, you don’t know when you’re going to retire, but as soon as we got told the 2021 World Cup was in New Zealand, I was like ‘I have to go’ – well, if Simon [Middleton, England coach] picks me. Either way, I had to put myself in a position to be picked to go, because aside from England, which I did in 2010, I couldn’t think of a better place to go to a World Cup.”

And avenge all those finals? “Absolutely,” she says. “Ireland did amazing in beating them [New Zealand] in 2014 [when England won the World Cup but didn’t face the Kiwis], but it meant we didn’t get the chance to beat them. We lost in 2010 and 2017, so it’d be nice to do it in their backyard.”

Given the Black Ferns have been able to play and train freely for a good deal longer than their English counterparts, they could have an advantage beyond home. “They’ve been able to train and play without restrictions,” she says, “and our team has not been tested in a physical way, but in a mental capacity of having things change. So, it’ll be down to how we’ve adapted, how the team comes together after what it’s had to go through. Hopefully that will work in our favour, by consciously drawing on these experiences.” 

And whatever happens, it’s definitely the last. Not going to be tempted by one more World Cup? “Absolutely not,” she says. “Although friends from home won’t believe me, they think I said I’d only do one more after 2014, then after 2017, I was like ‘okay one more’, so they won’t believe me. But four more years? I’ll be nearly forty and it’ll be well and truly time to hang up my boots!”

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Lara Miller

This extract was taken from issue 13 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.