Emily Scarratt

On a farm in Leicestershire, in what was once a cow shed, the world’s best rugby player is using straw bales for squats, doing pull-ups on pallets and kicking balls though old tractor tyres. The only real challenge for Emily Scarratt, is a 500-piece puzzle. Now that’s ‘next-level’, she admits. 

Although just a few months shy of her 80th birthday, Granny Scarratt has proven to be a useful source of gym kit since the world shut down. At least for her granddaughter Emily, that is. It’s only been four days since the official lockdown, but already the world No.1 women’s rugby player has been scurrying around the various nooks of the family farm in search of bric-a-brac to build a makeshift gym. “Gran has a lot of old weights,” explains Emily, “they’re pretty much antiques – they were used as counterweights for potatoes and stuff like that. They were in pounds though, so I’ve had to do some converting.

“I’ve basically been wandering around picking up things that would be useful. I’ve made things like a bar across two stacks of pallets for pull-ups, straw bales as squat racks or building a bench press out of two tyres and a plank of wood – although if Dad  gets a puncture I may have to deconstruct it. I’ve told him if he’s missing anything, it’s in my shed.

“The nature of the farm, means you won’t see anyone, so you have that space and freedom, so I’m very fortunate and I won’t even see my dad as he’s always out working somewhere.”

The family farm stretches across 300 acres of Leicestershire. “It’s beef and arable, we’ve probably got about 40 cows, different breeds, it’s not really a big cow thing,” says Emily, who lives at her own place in the town of Ellistown, a 20-minute drive from the farm. “My dad was born on the farm, he’s the third generation of farmers, and him and mum live at the bottom of the drive, my gran lives in the farmhouse and my brother is just over the valley.”

Ironically, her new lockdown-imposed routine means she’s actually returning to her favourite childhood routine – running around the farm. “I loved it,” she says of growing up on the farm. “I didn’t know anything else, but I had freedom to go and do what I wanted, and all that space to play in. I learnt to drive a tractor as soon as I was able to reach the pedals, I remember sitting on Dad’s knee and steering.

“We’d also help with riddling [sizing and grading] the potatoes and, in the milk parlour, they had water guns to clean down cows, and I remember being a nuisance squirting everyone with it. 

“I was just there being a pain in the arse,” she admits. “I wasn’t massively into the farming side of it but my brother’s three years older and he was really interested, he’s a partner in it now. He works elsewhere, because the farm isn’t massive, so it doesn’t need two full-time people, except at harvest time.”

Now, Emily is finally pulling her weight on the farm, albeit as she follows the training plans set out by the England S&C team. “To be honest it’s the same training schedule as I’d normally do, but without the rugby,” she says. “It’s now lifting four times a week, increased by one. Then you’ve got running sessions to do, which are a bit more mundane by yourself rather than throwing a ball around.

“I’ve got a push bike that I use to go up and down the drive, which is bit of a hill, and that works as an off-feet session. And I’ve been trying to keep my eye in by kicking the ball into a tyre in the barn and doing some trick shots.”

Earlier in the month, Emily had been kicking at bigger goals, nailing eight conversions in front of a record ticketed attendance of 10,974 at the Stoop as England completed a 66-7 demolition of Wales. It followed a 27-0 win over Ireland (three conversions ), a 53-0 destruction of Scotland (five conversions) and a player-of-the-match performance in France in which she crossed the whitewash for a decisive score in a 19-13 win. 

All that stood in the way of a back-to-back Grand Slam were Italy, a side they’d never lost to and that were put away 55-0 last season.

That match would have taken place on the 15th March. As well as adding a seventh Six Nations winners medal and a sixth Grand Slam to her haul, she’d now be looking at helping Loughborough Lightning secure a second successive Tyrrells Premier 15s semi-final spot. Instead, she’s doing spring cleaning.

“Normally I’d head off to Loughborough and spend the entirety of an afternoon or morning there,” she says. “I’d leave the house at 1ish  and not get back until 10  at night, so I suppose now I’m enjoying the novelty of spending more time in the house, getting jobs done I’ve been putting off. I’ve done a deep clean of the house, fixed the marks a leak left on the ceiling, cleaned all the cupboards out. My house isn’t the biggest, it’s a two-bedroom, so there’s not loads to do.  

“I quite like my own space, I’m the sort of person that’s happy in my own company. 

“I do enjoy being in other people’s company, I’m in a team sport,” she quickly adds, “but yeah I suppose I’m more of an introvert than extrovert, I’m not crazy sad about having all this time to myself – although it might wear thin soon.”

The team have been having conference calls each week, with other social gatherings on House Party. “We’ve done the classic toilet roll keepie-uppies skills challenge,” she says. “And we’ve been split into teams and given a physical challenge or something daft to do.”

She’s also hoping to get a bit of baking done, but not yet. “I’ve given up desserts and  cake for Lent, so that’s bad timing,” she says.  “I was thinking the other day I’ll set myself new goals, doing recipes that take a bit longer and don’t normally get the time to do.”

Like the rest of us, Netflix, Masterchef and Great British Menu have also helped pass the time, together with her level-3 coaching course. “I’ve been coaching one of the sides at Loughborough, one of the boys’ sides, doing a bit of backs stuff,” she says of her course. “Do I want to become a coach? Do I enjoy it? I don’t honestly know. 

“I’m doing a few things either to cross off the list or raise an interest,” she explains, mapping out a plan for post-rugby-playing life. “Coaching, media stuff, a lot of the commercial stuff, going to schools – I’m not crazy on giving talks, but when it needs to happen, I can do it. It’s part of it all, isn’t it? Raising our visibility, growing the game, we’re at that pivotal moment, where we can really keep pushing this ball down the hill, or put the brakes on.

“Media is really nerve-wracking, everybody knows who the men [pundits] are, but a lot of people haven’t seen me play or know if I know what I’m talking about.

“When you start doing stuff on the men’s game with BT Sport, or an international game with Sky, you don’t want to be the token girl they put on to increase the diversity of the panel, so I’ve asked for a lot  of feedback, and what I’ve had from it has been really positive.

“We’re all trying to lead the charge, so I do a lot of homework  for the games, to make sure I know the teams and how they perform.”

The lockdown means Emily has the luxury of time, so we agree to cover off her career over several calls/Zooms. It gives us the rare opportunity to go right back to the beginning. “Both Mum and Dad are from Leicestershire, both from farming families, they met at a young farmers ball,” she says, explaining the very, very beginning. “They were both into sport. Dad [Mark] still holds the record, or used to, at Oswestry school for sprinting and long jump and mum [Yvonne] was good at netball and hockey.”

Brother, Joe, inspired rugby move. “He played and I stood on the sidelines when I was five, and then I started to have a run around and just loved it,” she says. 

She joined the boys’ sides until the age of twelve, and then played girls-only with Leicester Forest East who joined up with another side, Anstey, to get a team together. “From then it was county programmes and that merged into the Midlands,” she continues. “I had trials for the Midlands but didn’t get selected at first. The coaches were from a different club and didn’t know who we were – it was gutting.”

After hearing she’d missed out, one well-connected coach who knew Emily’s game well pointed out what they were missing, and she was brought into the regional fray. “That was when people working for the RFU were picking up girls for performance camps,” says Emily. “I must have been about fifteen when I was asked if I’d be trialling.”

You had to be sixteen, so they had to wait. But just over two years later, Emily would be making her England debut and scoring twelve tries in her first twelve games.

We agree to pick up on that in our next chat. “Today I’ve got to head over to the farm for a bit of a gym session, then I’m not so sure,” she says, mapping out the rest of her day. “Internet, home gym bits – I’ve got a skipping rope and yoga mat – then dinner, and a bit of Level 3 work.

“I actually went online [food] shopping for the first time earlier, I’d never done it before, but they gave me three options and then they were all taken until April 14th – three weeks away!”

Ten days later things have ramped up in Emily’s life. “I’ve just done a bit of a puzzle that Mo [Natasha Hunt] gave me, it’s a picture of a chocolate selection box. There’s loads of recurring little chocolates, so it’s quite hard. It’s the first puzzle I’ve ever done myself, I’m not sure I’m ready for this level.”

How many pieces? “It’s only 500, but this is my first one,” she says, reiterating her inexperience.

The past week has seen the rearranging of the house come to an end. But she has put in some yards at the farm, even outside of her own ‘gym’. “In the bad winds, a couple of trees had fallen, so there was quite a lot of logs to move and chop,” she says. “I was boxing those up and I also helped put up a new shed and put some new matting down for the diggers to roll over so they wouldn’t get stuck. I had to pressure wash the matting as it was really caked in mud so it took forever – low-skilled manual labour jobs, they suit me down to the ground.”

Noughts and Crosses and The Nest have helped fill screen time, with Tiger King next on the list. There’s been England catch-ups. “The girls have lots of questions that nobody has answers to,’ says Emily. “About the summer stuff being played, when we’re starting rugby again, but no one knows how long this is going to last. We’ve just got to try and not get fat.”

Is motivation to train a problem? “Motivation is harder to find, naturally,” she admits. “Last week I was in a new gym, a different environment at the farm, in amongst it, and this week it sank in – the realisation that this could go on a long time now the season has been cancelled. 

“We don’t know when we’re going to play rugby again,” she continues. “We were supposed to have two Tests in the summer, Ireland and Spain, and that was something to work towards, but now, when you’ve been given a running session, up and down, five sets, and there’s no friends, no ball, no motivation – it’s harder to get your head around.”

Picking up Emily’s story from school rugby to England doesn’t take long. “It was just crazy to be honest with you, I was eighteen, just out of school, and I got called up for my first cap and first tour,” she says. “I definitely wasn’t expecting it, I’d just come back from an under-20s tour, and was expecting two years in that set-up, I didn’t even think about leapfrogging to the senior side.

“I’d finished school that summer, and me and five friends had gone away to Cyprus, it was our first holiday, we’d just turned eighteen and a couple of days into this holiday, I got a call from Streety [Gary Street, then England head coach], saying he was going to call me up at the end of the summer. The holiday took a bit of a different turn then, I had to stop drinking a little bit, and start training.”

She arrived at the first training session at Esher RFC facing a side of  unknowns. “I was so young I wasn’t with any friends in the side, so there were no people telling me what was going to happen, like having to speak up when you  get presented with your rose for your debut – I’ve still got that rose pressed at Mum and Dad’s.

“Catherine Spencer was the captain and then there was Katy Daley-Mclean, who’s now one of my best friends, Amy Turner who was one of the most skilful players I’d ever played with, Amy Garnett, who scared the living daylights out of me, but once I got to know her I realised she was pretty soft.”

With many of the England backs preparing for the 2009 sevens’ World Cup, Emily got an opportunity to start, facing the USA at Esher. “I came off the bench  with about twenty minutes left,” she recalls. “America were always known for being really physical, and I was this bandy 18-year-old. I was just looking for any opportunity to run into space, rather than bash into people, and these stacked Americans were giving me no opportunity to do that, so I got thrown about a bit.” 

She still found enough space to score a debut try. “Amy Turner played a lot of rugby at nine and had moved to twelve, she ran to the line, delayed the pass and gave it to me in space from the 22.

“The reaction of the girls  was cool,” says Emily, “I didn’t really know them then, but every single one of them whacked me on the head to say ‘well done’.”

Emily would score twelve tries in her first twelve Tests , including seven in her first-ever Six Nations campaign, which ended with England as champions. “That was crazy for me,” she admits. “Any rugby fan grows up watching the Six Nations, and all of a sudden, I was part of it, I scored a hat-trick against France, then against Wales, Italy (two) and Ireland.”

With the most successful of debut seasons under her belt, she then found herself part of a side preparing for a Rugby World Cup. “Never in a million years did I ever think that would happen in just two years,” she says. 

Thinking back, especially having just come off the back of sell-out crowds at Castle Park and the Stoop, things were very different then in the Six Nations. “You can’t really compare,” she says.  “We played Wales away at Taff’s Well, which  is quite a decent well-known club, but it was relatively small, always wet and boggy irrelevant of weather, and not many people watching. We’d play home games at London Welsh, and they weren’t on TV or in the papers, basically nobody was covering it and the only people watching were friends and family.

“There was no genuine additional support, we’d meet up a day or two before, leave after the game and even the kit was enormous, it was men’s fit, heavy cotton.

“The thought of playing at Twickenham or being a professional in front of thousands of fans…”

Nonetheless, twelve tries in twelve games…  “I was rolling with it really,” she reflects, “when we went into the World Cup year there was a lot more coverage than we’d ever had before and people wanted to speak to me. I was nineteen and twenty and I guess there was quite a decent weight on my shoulders, but I didn’t appreciate that at the time, I didn’t feel it was affecting  me, because it was so new.”

The World Cup pool stages were held at Surrey Sports Park. “We used to train there so we were familiar with it and they transformed it with hoardings, stands and bits and bobs,” says Emily. “For the group stages they’d set up three or four pitches next to each other in an old-school rugby tournament set-up, so there’d be different games on the same day. But for the semi-finals, it was rammed at the Stoop and to be in the final was the most ridiculous thing to be part of.”

The final was against New Zealand who, at this stage, had won three of the five World Cups. “Arriving at the ground and just having no understanding  of how many people would be there, and then the noise they made – 95 per cent  of the people in the crowd were cheering us on – that was the only wobbly leg moment.

“The final was massive , next level. New Zealand had obliterated everyone, and we knew this was going to be tough. Some of the girls were part of the  previous World Cup (when they’d lost 25-17 to the Kiwis), but they’d also played New Zealand in 2009 at Twickenham and beaten them, so that gave us some belief – we knew these people in black shirts weren’t the unbeatable side  they were made out to be. 

“I can’t remember much of that day,” she admits, “it was a bit of a blur. I remember getting off the bus, I do remember the team run the day before and it wasn’t the best we’d ever done, there were some evident nerves. You always look back and wonder if you could have told at that point, we were a bit shaky. 

“I remember it being a proper contest, for both sides, and that the joy we’d had throughout the tournament wasn’t there. Both defences were better, and it came down to margins, kicking penalties. Carla Hohepa scored, Beanie [Charlotte Barras] scored to level. 

“I remember Hohepa breaking down the touchline and [Joanna] McGilchrist  our second row chased her down and we all came flooding back – it was one of those moments of grit.”

A penalty from Kelly Brazier ended up settling the game for the Black Ferns. “As a 20-year-old, I’d been whisked along on this journey, so I didn’t understand what it meant and for some of the people that had lost before, this was their last tournament. Seeing their reaction, that was heart-breaking .”

Months later, they had a review. “Everyone was invited, some girls came back that had retired, just to wrap it all up, it was important for closure,” she says.

Outside of rugby, Emily had been at university studying sport science, which would ultimately lead to her taking her first proper job as a PE assistant at King Edward’s in Birmingham, where she spent two years.

On the pitch, England had carried on as before, winning the Grand Slam in 2011, before the focus returned to sevens and the 2013 Sevens Rugby World Cup in Moscow, where the side – made up mostly of players from the fifteens – failed to make a dent, finishing sixth. “We got back from Moscow, three days later half of the sevens side joined the fifteens and flew to New Zealand for a three-Test series. It was a clash of different worlds, some of us coming back from disappointment and then a group of girls focused on this tour, and we’re all on a 24-hour journey.

“There wasn’t any time for moping, you had to get stuck in or don’t, and just try and make the best out of everything, but it’s hard to flip your mindset. That was the start of the 2014 journey – three Tests against the world champions.”

They lost all three Tests: 29-10, 14-9 and 29-8. “We might have won one,” says Emily, “we came close once.”

The next Six Nations brought more defeat, this time to France, 18-6 in Grenoble. “At the time it didn’t feel like it, but reflecting on it now, that defeat was one of the best things that happened to us. If we’d breezed the Six Nations going into a World Cup, we might not have looked at ourselves and made the changes we did. Everyone was devastated about losing to France, but we looked at how we could improve and different staff members booted us up the arse, and the new S&C, Stuart Pickering, he brought in new standards, a new way of behaving and a different attitude.”

In France for the Rugby World Cup, the side began with two easy wins: 65-3 against Samoa and a 45-5 win over Spain, before drawing the third pool game 13-13 with Canada. It was enough to qualify them for another semi-final, against Ireland, who had won the Grand Slam only a year before and had just defeated the Black Ferns 23-17.  This time, a 40-7 scoreline in England’s favour, told the story of a complete role reversal, leaving just Canada between them and a Rugby World Cup win. “There was a lot of pressure, but different pressure,” says Emily. “Ask any of us prior to that tournament, if we wanted to play Canada in the final, and we’d have bitten your hand off, no disrespect, but there were other teams we were more fearful of. They were there by right, they’d had an amazing tournament.

“We had to do this now, this felt like it was our time, everyone believed we could win, but not to the point where we’d already won it, and Canada had a nothing-to-lose mentality.” 

Did it matter that it wasn’t the Black Ferns? “When it comes to a World Cup, everybody introduces you as the side that won the World Cup in 2014, they don’t care who you beat in final. It’s not about who you beat in the group, or in the knockouts, it’s all about the outcome, that’s what matters.”

The Rugby World Cup final was at  the Stade Jean-Bouin in Paris. “When you walk from the changing room, you have this underground cellar bit, which is the warm-up area,” explains Emily. “You go there to stretch off and it must have been like ten flights of stairs to get down to that, and my legs just felt so heavy. There had been a lot of games and it was just at the point where the last thing you wanted was ten flights of stairs.

“There was so much support that day, it was opposite to the New Zealand game where it had always felt like they had the upper-hand, even though the score was tight, this time we were always in control. Even when things didn’t go well, we were still in control.”

By now Emily had taken over kicking duties from Katy – who was captain of the side. “I’ve always been a kicker,” she says. “Under 19s, 20s, for club, and in international games when Katy wasn’t playing, I’d kicked as well.

“Nolli [Danielle Waterman] scored the first try in the right-hand corner and I remember being really pissed off that I’d missed that kick.

“We were fighting, but in control, we knew it was going to happen.”

Seventy-four minutes in. England are 14-9 up, still not a converted try clear of their opponents. The ball is fed to Emily running a tight line on the shoulder of Katy, she breaks the first tackle, then cuts an angle running through five Canadian defenders to cross and secure the win. “One of the weird things you remember was that when the forwards started driving,  me, Katy and Burf [Rachael Burford] were still having a conversation about what kind of move we were going to do – in the end Katy just hit me. Best laid plans and all that…

“When I scored, that was the point we knew we won. We had been confident up to that point, but now we’d won it. The points at the time, meant barring a miracle, we had won.”

At the final whistle, Emily remembers the bench charging on. “People jumping all over everyone, people were in tears, screaming and shouting – I just remember turning to Katy, and just saying,  ‘we’ve done it’. It was a sense of relief, everyone expected us to do it, we expected to do it, two World Cup finals, and finally we’d done it.”

While a good chunk of this side had played in two finals, England had been waiting since 1994 – their first and only win – to lift a second world crown. “We left the stadium on the bus and then on a bar on a corner we randomly saw some friends and family, and also Gill Burns, who was a pioneer of our game – we stopped the bus and all piled off and they all started singing Swing Low… at us. It turned into a mass singsong with Gill on her guitar. It wasn’t planned, it was unbelievable, just so good.”

Three weeks into lockdown and more of the same. More training, more odd jobs, more level 3 coaching course. “It takes a whole year of actively coaching, being observed, a theory course and 70 pages in a portfolio of what we’ve learnt, reflections, and then presentations,” she says, explaining a coaching  qualification that allows her to take charge of any senior side.  

Rugby-wise, they’ve had an easier week. “We had a bit of a de-load week, with training tapered a bit, so I’ve managed to sweep the shed [at the farm] out so it’s less dusty.”

The news has also been released about the Tyrrells Premier 15s tender process, which has seen Richmond and Firwood Waterloo replaced with the newly formed Exeter Chiefs and Sale Sharks women’s sides in the ten-team top-flight. As with the process three years ago, when newcomers Loughborough Lightning made it at the expense of perennial challengers Lichfield, the process has caused more controversy, not least because Richmond are five-times champions – joint level with Saracens. “We knew a lot of the people who had put bids in, the women’s rugby world isn’t particularly big,” says Emily. “We also knew a lot of the coaches, and the chances of Exeter and Sale getting in were pretty strong given the fact that they’re pretty substantial rugby clubs, so I think people assumed they would make it.”

The tender release was then followed with news that Emily’s club and country team-mate, Katy  was leaving Loughborough Lightning to join Sale Sharks as player-coach.

“She’s been travelling down from Manchester for Loughborough, so it makes total sense for her because of where she is in her life.”

“I suppose now when we go on an away game it gives me somewhere to go and stay, it’ll be a huge loss and obviously, as one of my best friends, it’s always nice to hang out and kick a ball around with her but it’s also what she brings on the pitch as well, it’ll be a huge loss.

“Three years ago when Lichfield didn’t get a spot, it was devastating, but as I was playing sevens, I wasn’t involved in the club game, and when I came back to it last year, there was a phenomenal difference. The support now everyone gets from physio, S&C and coaching is huge, you just can’t compare it to what it used to be like [before it became the TP15s]. 

“It’s massive from that point of view,” she says of the TP15s. “The quality of players and the end product is improving, and they’re improving physically too. At the moment we’re a reasonable way off being professional, we still train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, like thousands of rugby clubs, but at what point does that change into a more professional set-up, rather than a hobby that takes up a lot of time? There has to be a tipping point, if and when, I’m not sure but it’s exciting times. Fast forward 10-15 years and let’s see what state it is, maybe we’ll have youngsters driving around in Range Rovers.

“There’s definitely a fanbase at Loughborough,” she continues “They’re trying to look at the netball model, the Lightning team started their journey before us and now sell out their games. The landscape is different, but you can still make one of these franchises viable. Loughborough seemingly has a ceiling other places doesn’t have, because it doesn’t have a connection to a Premiership club, but there’s a men’s side, and you can see the potential.

“All those people that came to watch us at the Stoop, for the Wales Six Nations game, we presume they enjoy women’s rugby, but can they do that on a regular basis? 

“I don’t know,” she admits. “It would be amazing to see a properly professional side, but we’re a long way off that, but we have to keep battering down the door, to make people see what it is we’re trying to offer.”

Emily became a professional player after the Rugby World Cup win. “We got professional contracts as sevens players in 2014/15 so we had two years to get ready and qualify for Rio [Olympics, when the sport was making its debut].

“I’d been a PE assistant and the wage was similar to that, like an apprenticeship wage really, but the biggest thing was that the programme was based in Surrey, so it was considerably more expensive finding somewhere to live in one of the most affluent places in the country.

“But it was irrelevant how much it was, it was the opportunity to play rugby and get paid for it – something I never thought I’d get in my lifetime. 

“It had been mooted [professionalism], and between the girls we’d talked about it, but you don’t want to get your hopes up. You’d heard things over the years and it never quite came off.”

“You went from waking up every morning to do weights, then have a full day’s  school and after-school clubs and then it was rugby training, falling into bed and repeating. Then you were pro rugby players, and it was, ‘what do I do with my time?’ 

“Obviously, I bought Netflix pretty quickly and settled into professional life.”

The first contract was for a year, then upgraded for a second to take Emily to Rio. Another two years followed Rio, and the current one – for fifteens only – is a year. “We’ve never had certainty on contracts in terms of length and I understand that’s the nature of sport,” she says. “Things change but it’s a weird feeling that you could stay in it for ten years and not need a proper job until then or it could last a year and you’re straight back to normal life, so you’ve just got to ride it.”

England had qualified for the Olympics on behalf of Team GB, securing a top four place in the series after defeating fifth-placed America in the last game of the last  tournament. “The first thing we did with Team GB was the kitting out day at the NEC in Birmingham, it was unbelievable,” she says. “You walk round and there’s the Stella McCartney section, the performance section, your own sports section, rugby-specific jerseys, and all the other sponsors were there – Nissan, Audi – giving out freebies. 

“You came away with about three massive kit bags of stuff, boots, trainers, formal wear, suits – the whole shebang. It was just ridiculous. Speak to any sports person and stash is king and this was the first time we’d ever had anything other than England rugby kit, so it was one of the most surreal days of my life.

“We flew to Brazil to the holding camp just for Team GB, you’re in a UK bubble until you move to the village. It’s this huge complex, high-rise buildings with flags on so you can see the flags based on the nation that were occupying that block. There were swimming pools under each block, and these buildings were enormous, you arrive like a tourist trying to work out where everything is and there’s people around already settled, riding around on their little bikes.

“Usain Bolt was there and he was getting absolutely mobbed, as you can imagine, and then you had some people you didn’t recognise and then you saw them compete and thought ‘oh, I was stood behind him at lunch the other day’.”

Ranked fourth, they beat Canada – the third seeds – in the pool, together with hosts Brazil and Japan. They faced Fiji in the last eight. “I ruptured the MCL in my elbow in that Fiji game, and the next day we had New Zealand in the semi-final and lost. It was expected but you go in full of hope because sevens is a strange sport, sometimes you can literally beat anyone.

“We imploded a bit [on the day we played New Zealand and Canada for bronze],” she says, “people got sin-binned, we got ourselves in a position where we made it difficult for ourselves. Then we played Canada in the bronze medal match and basically most things that you didn’t want to happen happened. It was the opposite of what happened in the group game [when they’d beaten Canada]. 

“Looking back, losing to us was probably the best thing that happened to them. It was properly heart-breaking , the girls were in bits after that game. We’d prepared all season, the Olympics was it, and we wanted to medal – we hadn’t been unrealistic and said we wanted gold, we wanted to medal because we genuinely thought that was realistic. 

“Fourth place is often the worst place to finish isn’t it? Sometimes you’d rather lose in the quarter final than in the semi, but it was a really tough one to take.

“I was the captain at the time and had to do an interview with John Inverdale on the side of the pitch for the BBC straight after. None of my family were out there because being a farming family it was harvest time of year, so the first time they could check in on me was watching this interview, and I was obviously quite upset.

“We then supported the boys, they did amazing, to come back with a silver medal, was unbelievable for them, but it was also really hard because, how good would it have been if we could have celebrated it together having both won a medal? We’d finished before them  so we got a load of beers in for them and had a few drinks to congratulate, then we came straight back and got stuck back into the fifteens for the 2017 Rugby World Cup.”

Another Grand Slam [England’s 13th] followed. Had professionalism built a stronger squad than 2014? “The obvious answer was yes,” says Emily, “but the calibre of players in 2014 – there was a lot of experience. That’s not to say our 2017 wasn’t quality, but 2014 was almost the wonder year, it all just came together.

“We won the Six  Nations, we’d beaten France, beaten Ireland, then we went to New Zealand on a three-Test tour and we won 2-1. One of our Tests was before the British & Irish Lions played the Maori All Blacks – to be there at such a rugby moment. We played our Test before them, showered up and then sat in the stands and watched them play. 

“Everywhere you walked people were in Lions shirts, we were an England team but the Welsh, Scottish and Irish out there supporting the Lions were with us as well because it was the collective unity against them.”

The series win was set to be the impetus towards a back-to-back world crown, much as the away win in New Zealand was for Clive Woodward’s England at the start of the Millennium. “We’d bigged it up,” says Emily, “we’d talked about how a side had never gone to New Zealand and won – and then we went over there and did it. Was that then detrimental to our World Cup campaign? You can never directly attribute these things but in 2014 we didn’t win Six Nations and we looked at that as a kick start.

They duly made their way to the final in Ireland, but this time New Zealand faced them, rather than Canada. “We were up 17-10 at half time, so we knew we could score against them, but we knew they could and would score against us as with the quality they had.

“When they scored their first try, Portia [Woodman] stood on my ankle and clipped a nerve in my foot, so I stayed down as I couldn’t feel it. They cut my sock off – and this is happening  while they’re taking their conversion – it was maybe ten minutes into the final. We’d already lost Nolli, so I’d moved to full back because she was concussed, we didn’t really have a great deal more movement we could possibly do. So, they strapped it up…”

The game turned into a modern classic, as New Zealand changed their game-plan  in the second half, taking the lead in the 53rd minute and never relinquishing it, running out 41-32 winners. “They came out second half and changed what they were doing to the point that we couldn’t get a foothold back in the game, especially in that last twenty or so minutes, we couldn’t get the ball off them, we couldn’t stop them going forwards, they kind of marched their way back up the scoreboard. 

“It was a really hard game, I felt like I was watching it at times because a lot didn’t happen in my channels and you’re watching something implode a bit and can’t do anything about it, that was really hard and frustrating.

“I’ve probably only felt that kind of thing once or twice in my career just that feeling of helplessness as you can’t do anything about it. In terms of my emotional reaction, I was more upset after Rio than that World Cup and I don’t really know why, I don’t know whether you get used to losing in finals to the Kiwis or what, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

“Sometimes you have to put your hands up and accept the fact that you were beaten and whether they had better tactics or executed it better, you weren’t meant to win the game. It didn’t feel like we had bad luck, we took the chances we had. 

“In the press conferences the questions you get asked, ‘I’m sure that it’s no consolation to you but that was probably one of the best games of women’s rugby that’s ever been broadcast’. It was on ITV and around the world and at the time you’re  thinking ‘are you seriously asking me that question?’ But when you reflect and see the wider impact that the game’s had on people around the world, people enjoying our sport, taking it up etc etc, I do think that it’s had a massive impact.”

Perceptions have largely changed since Emily first made her England debut twelve years ago, but not with everyone. “It depends where you are and who you talk to,” she says. “They ask ‘what do you do?’ ‘I’m a rugby player’ ‘ooh, you don’t look like a rugby player’.

“I’m quite tall, I’m a different body shape to some of the girls, so people will automatically think netball or maybe basketball – netball is stereotypically more of a female sport and that does still happen, less often and more predominantly in the older generation though. 

“You have people who love sport and come and watch women’s rugby and are like ‘ooh’, it’s almost like it’s a surprise to them. Obviously, it’s not the same as men’s, we’re not trying to pretend that it is. We’re not built like them, we don’t have the same skillset, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have our own qualities and abilities that people can appreciate. 

“We just want people to be more open minded and not shutting it down because it’s women playing sport and they’ve got these dusty old perceptions of what women should and shouldn’t be doing. It is the minority now which is very pleasing. I don’t have time for that anymore.”

Emily is the best player on the planet. Official. “It’s so weird,” she says of her world player of the year award last November. “You play a team sport and all your goals and aspirations are related to your team, and you may have personal ones maybe related to my kicking but they’re never related to an accolade.

“Just to be nominated alongside my team mates Katy and Bernie [Sarah Bern] – I’d put them on the list if I had to pick my top players in the world.

“That weekend was ridiculous, I flew out to Japan on the Saturday for the men’s Rugby World Cup final that evening, Sunday was the world rugby awards, then on Monday I flew straight to Heathrow where my car was, and drove to Bisham Abbey to join the squad because we had a training camp. Then, the next Wednesday we flew out to France for an autumn international against France.

“The evening itself was just mad, I’d never been to a world rugby awards and it was enormous, you were just constantly walking past all these faces that you recognise and know and you sit through the awards and see people getting their awards and say ‘blimey that’s such and such…’ 

“It came to my award, Bryan Habana and Bill Beaumont were presenting and I genuinely  didn’t expect my name to be called, I was sat next to Kendra [Cocksedge, the Black Ferns  No.9] and when my name was called I was genuinely really stunned and the entire room rose and I was a bit like, ‘flipping heck, they hadn’t done that for all of the other awards’, it wasn’t like, ‘we’re at the world rugby awards, we stand and clap for everybody.’ 

“My table wasn’t far away from the stage, but it seemed to take ages to get there. You do a little chat on stage and then you disappear backstage and have photos and interviews and then you get spat back out the other side and then you’re done. 

“By the time I’d done all of that, the rest of the awards had finished and I was there by myself and I kind of sheepishly walked back, it was incredibly humbling. 

“I’ve probably not got my head around it, you look at the people on the list, there’s not many and it’s kind of a big deal.”

Now 30, 89-cap Emily is also England’s top point-scorer with 557 (46 tries, 107 conversions, 43 penalties). Combined with the Rugby World Cups, the Grand Slams, the Olympic appearances, there can’t be much left to achieve. “The World Cup next year is massive, that was the reason I came back to fifteens to give that a real shot with these girls around me,” she says. “The contracts are totally separate and it’s hard to quantify, but I think I can be better, I’ve also never won a domestic premiership title so that would be pretty cool to do that, but the years are running out. 

“As soon as you get to the point where you either don’t think there’s anything left, or you’re not bothered about what’s left, that might be the right time to step aside and let some whippersnapper who’s got real fire in their belly have a go, but for the moment that’s definitely still there.”

She might be closer to retirement than debut, but there’s the real world and she knows she’s going to be starting again. “I have lived with some of my closest friends in rugby and now I live away from my closest friends in rugby,” she says. “Now some people are getting married, some are having children, some are going travelling, but you feel like you’re coming out of uni again rather than being a 30-year-old. My normal friends now own businesses or they’ve been working for ten years working their way up, whereas you feel like a youngster entering the real world. 

“I don’t know when retirement will come,” she admits. “I don’t know if it’ll be next year or four or five more years.”

Are you worried? “I’m wary, not worried about it. People say, ‘what are you going to do after rugby?’ And everyone’s like, ‘oh well, things will come up’. Okay, what are these magical things? I need to give a lot more applied thought over the next couple of years and certainly make sure that all of a sudden if it did all come crashing down there are things I could pick up. 

“I hope, if it’s on my terms when I retire, I’ll be ready and excited for a new challenge that real work will bring. It will be a huge shock to the system and hit me like a train but it will be exciting nonetheless.”

Any preferences for career direction? “I’d definitely love to stay in sport somewhere, so if you’ve got any bright ideas…”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Philip Haynes

This extract was taken from issue 10 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.