Amy Wilson-Hardy

“We’re in the same boat as the people in the entertainment industry, we can only do what we love to do and what we’ve trained so hard to do. So when they say, ‘you’ve just got to retrain’. Well, no. We still have goals and aspirations and you can’t just walk away from that.”

“I got to the point where you could hit me with anything,” says Amy Wilson-Hardy, describing when she found out the England Rugby sevens programme had been cancelled. “It took a while for it to sink in,” she adds. 

At 29, Amy is/was one of the more experienced players in the England set-up. An international at both variants of the game, she’s played in Rugby World Cups, Olympics and Commonwealth Games. “The first thing was, ‘how can I live my life and train as an athlete?’,” she says. “I’m fortunate enough to have an engineering degree from Bath as an option but I don’t want to do that now. Basically I was, ‘what can I do that will get me enough money to pay my mortgage, train as a professional athlete, live the lifestyle I want to lead, knowing this isn’t the end?’ – I’m not going to let it be the end. 

“I’m not motivated by money at all, so as long as I’ve got enough to pay my mortgage and bills I’m fine. I’ve managed to work it out for now, it’s not comfortable but at least I can train as much as I can.”

She’s made her money through ‘bits and pieces here and there’, coaching different groups and sides, including work with the School of Hard Knocks. “The first time I coached with them I was working with a group of women from south-west London who had never touched a rugby ball before, they ranged from the age of 17 to 60. 

“There were so many laughs and, when you listen to people’s hardships and struggles and how they’ve had the mental strength to pull through, it teaches you a lot too.”

Like many, lockdown brought challenges, including the passing of her gran and every stress that comes with moving home. “I’m very good at isolating myself and some of the issues would have been better if I’d taken my own advice and spoken to people,” she says.

“At the start we couldn’t even go to the gym, I was so frustrated – I had one kettle bell – and then, as soon as the Olympics were cancelled, I was ‘why am I doing this?’.

“Even in the off season you still have motivation because, it’s ‘I’m doing it for the start of the season’. Then, there’s the mental health side, I’ve always used training as my get-out but suddenly it wasn’t my get-out, and you’re finding something else to replace it. 

“I’m an introvert generally,” she admits, “but when it’s two months of your own company you realise how much you miss the social interaction of being in a team sport.”

She misses the collective exhaustion. “I miss being in the state of absolute fatigue, of not being able to do any more and, looking around, seeing your team-mates in exactly the same position. So much of what sevens is about for me is that – there’s nothing better than coming off the pitch when you’ve just won because you’ve given everything you have.”

Of late, that collective gain, has been collective loss, but the removal of funding has united them, not only just the sevens’ girls, but the boys too. “It’s brought us closer,” says Amy, “it’s given us a deeper understanding [of each other]. You get a vibe of who’s motivated by what, and see a different side to people – it’s comforting to have the campaign [to raise funds], as it keeps us together but it’s a huge amount of work for athletes to do – you realise why it’s not been done before! 

“There are some people doing so much work, chasing people, and it can be demoralising when you don’t get the answers you want, but it shows how much they care about the programme. 

“Hopefully they see the backing from all of us, hopefully it shows the strength and the unity in that we’re all in this together and there’s never been the question of the boys doing this without us and likewise we’d never do it without the boys.”

Amy was one of the players who has gone between the disciplines, playing in Rio, then shifting back to fifteens for the Rugby World Cup in 2017, before again returning to sevens.

“Even after the year playing fifteens, and coming back to sevens, the game completely changed,” she says. “The metres per minute went up something ridiculous like twenty metres per minute which is huge. You’re constantly moving forward and it puts completely different physical pressures on the body.

“I’m a case in point,” she admits, “the year I went back to fifteens I also got asked to play a couple of sevens’ tournaments and I tore my hamstring really badly, I nearly wrote myself off for the [2017 fifteens] World Cup. 

“It’s a different load to the body, which is why they had to split – the fifteens and sevens squads – it’s where the game had to go, we are England sevens.”

Although now, they’re not. “It’s hard not to see it as a huge step backwards,” she says. “The RFU to me should be about the players, we worked so hard for it, and it’s not a transferable skill – we can’t just find another rugby team to go and be a part of.”

She might not have been able to find one that can pay the bills, but in Wasps she’s at least found an outlet to help the physical aspect. “When the conversation came round about fifteens, I was dreading it,” she admits. “I felt so demotivated about training, and yet I’ve always loved training, I’ve always been someone who loved the gym.

“But for the first-time ever I didn’t want to train, I didn’t want to do anything, so when the conversation first started, I was like ‘ugh’ but when I started, it’s brought back a bit of routine, and made me realise that I love it. 

“The same thing happened when I got dropped [from England], I lost the love of the game and went to Wasps and found it again and I feel like I’ve found it again that this time around.

“I had my nose sorted out about a month ago, so I wasn’t up for selection for the start,” she says, pointing to a nose that had been broken a ‘fair few times’, but I can now breath out of both sides.” 

The normality of a rugby routine with Wasps hasn’t taken away from her Olympic goals, even if the World Series feels like a world away in every sense. “There are no answers,” she says about the side’s enquiries into the status of the global calendar. “It is global and, unfortunately, for the game we play travel is integral to it and getting however many nations to the same place is a huge challenge. 

“That’s a bit more understandable though, a complete disbandment of the programme, though,” she says, referencing the England situation again, “it is tough, you want answers and it’s all the more frustrating when you’re in limbo.”

“When we first got furloughed and put on lockdown we were expecting it to be a couple of weeks and then, suddenly, that’s a couple of months and then it’s this.

“I can’t say it was a surprise when we got that final call, but if you’d told me that at the start of lockdown – no Olympics, we wouldn’t have a programme, then no way would I have believed you.”

Amy acknowledges there are plenty of others in the same situation, and not just in rugby. “There’s obviously been a bit of a rebellion off the back of the Government’s campaign about the people in the arts industry retraining, and I can completely appreciate that,” she says. “We’re in the same boat as the people in the entertainment industry, we can only do what we love to do and what we’ve trained so hard to do, so when they say ‘you’ve just got to retrain’, well, no, we still have goals and aspirations and you can’t just walk away from that. It [Tokyo] will be a very different experience from other Olympics but it’s still top of your game, it’s the forefront of sport. 

“Now we’re in this limbo of just wanting to be the best athlete you can be but not having the support, obviously some of its self-controlled but, ultimately, we need to be playing rugby, playing sevens specifically. It’s great that the girls have the opportunity to go to clubs and play – not all the boys have that – but at the same time it’s fifteens and a completely different sport. Both of the games have evolved so much but at least it adds a bit of structure.”

Sevens has always created big landmarks in Amy’s life, including the move to professional. Playing for her hometown of Worthing, she’d followed the RFU pathway right up to England under-20s, but had hit a wall. “I saw some of my friends go from under 20s into seniors and I didn’t, and I was like ‘I wanna be there and put my head down’. 

“I was over ten kilos heavier than I am now, and it probably wasn’t until I went to Bristol and played Premiership Rugby that I took it a bit more seriously.”

While still doing an engineering degree at Bath, she was offered a full-times sevens’ contract, meaning she had to combine the third year of her study with training and playing for her country. “I was writing my dissertation on aeroplanes and in hotel receptions and somehow managing to come out with a half decent degree in electrical engineering. I may use skills I’ve got from it, I do see myself as being quite entrepreneurial in the future.

“I’ve always loved rugby, it’s an amazing game, but lockdown has shown a different side of life and I think I used to be scared of thinking about life after rugby. 

“I don’t want to be that player who hangs on, I want to put everything into the time I choose to play. Whether I get to the Olympics, the Commonwealths, I don’t know, but I want to make sure I’m in a position play on my terms.

“I don’t want to dwindle away,” she insists, “even if the Olympics wasn’t there, I don’t want to finish. In my head I’m good enough and I have to have that confidence because that mindset got me back in the squad and that has to be the same when the time’s right.

“Hopefully we can get into a position where we can get back playing,” she concludes, “I’m a very logical, focussed person, everything has to be organised, but equally I know sports doesn’t always work like that as it’s shown so many times, so I need to be aware that it may not happen on my terms.

“I’ve still got the fire in my belly, if there was a sevens programme going on and all my team-mates were going in and training, I know that 100 per cent I’d be chomping at the bit to be with them. There’s life in the old dog yet.

“Until someone tells you no, we just keep moving forward. My outlook is that we haven’t been given a ‘no’, the event is still in the calendar. 

“We are still, in our heads, England sevens’ players.”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley