Origin Stories #1 Maud Muir

If you’re lucky, and find yourself in Oxford, the most English of England’s cathedral cities, look to the tree-lined river, and you might catch a glimpse of a rugby superhero deftly punting her way through the waters. Maud Muir is a prop of many talents.

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Maud Muir is bored. Few people love people quite as much as Maud Muir and, it’s fair to say, the feeling is quite mutual. Speak to anyone who has crossed paths with the Gloucester-Hartpury and England prop and nothing but loveliness comes forth when describing the 23-year-old Red Rose. 

Just ask her club c0-captain,  and England team-mate, Mo Hunt, who says of Maud: “She’s just unbelievable. She’s genuinely one of the kindest souls, so funny and always brings light to the room. She’s very quirky too.

“For instance, for the final last year she dressed up as Taylor Swift, because some of the girls missed the concert and then basically performed Taylor to us with a wig and everything. So yeah, just an unbelievable person to have around, genuinely loved by everyone, and obviously a weapon on the field as well.”

But, right now, as we chat in the Gloucester flat she shares with Irish lock Sam Monaghan and Wales hooker, Kelsey Jones, she’s bored. “They’re both coming back from ACL injuries, so Sam’s rehabbing back in Ireland, and Kelsey back with Wales, so I’ve been home alone for the last few months, which is a bit sad,” Maud tells Rugby Journal, adding. “I’m not very good at being on my own.

“I’ve not been doing much,” she says of her efforts to overcome the boredom, as she herself was also out of regular training routines due to a concussion. “I try and see people to be honest, so that I’m not on my own. Although I am learning the harmonica, it’s not going very well though, I’m still playing it very badly.”

It’s a very Maud thing to do. If there’s one thing she likes to do, it’s keep busy. “I probably have a bit of ADHD, to be honest; I haven’t been tested or anything,” she says, ‘but I definitely have some of the symptoms.

“I really like playing games, especially in camp,” she continues, listing ways she tries to avoid a dull moment. “I just hate being on my phone a lot, so I’ll always be playing games with the girls, I’ve even made a board game, it’s called Tuck, Tuck. 

“I mean I didn’t originally make the game up, but I made my own version of it,” she adds. “Have you ever played Frustration, where there’s a little plastic thing in the middle? It’s a bit like that, you have to get all the way around the board till you’re back to your home, but there’s also pack of cards involved. Anyway, I made a London Underground version of it.”

Although positioning herself firmly at the bottom when it comes to creative genes among her siblings (she has an older brother, Arthur, and sister Molly), Maud has become known for her artsy tendencies. “I do like doing lots of crafts,” she says, “which is not the normal thing for a rugby player to talk about, but I’m always trying to do something a bit crafty, or trying to make stuff for people. 

“Like, for the last [PWR] final [when Gloucester-Hartpury beat Bristol Bears 36-24], I made everyone a little clay shirt with their surname on the back. It was just something a bit personal to them, I like doing things like that, I think it’s because I always appreciate a homemade gift. 

“It can just be a little thing,” she adds, “it doesn’t cost much, but it means someone’s thought about it, you know what I mean?

“My brother and sisters are actually good at art, whereas I’m like, crafty, not arty. You’ll see some of her paintings and stuff all around the house, but I’m kind of more creative rather than actually good at the actual art. I’m quite messy, and I think that’s reflected in my creations.”

Telling Maud’s origin story is pretty straightforward from a rugby point of view. She followed in her brother’s footsteps to the local club Oxford Harlequins, aged five, and found her feet when contact came into play. “I was a prop from the beginning, or as soon as they had positions, look like a prop, play like a prop,” explains Maud. “And it was always the contact bit I loved. I wouldn’t run at spaces, I would just run at a person to try and bounce them. When I was a kid, that’s just what I thought I had to do, and I loved it. 

“Now, you have to run at spaces,” she says, while also reflecting on how much she does look for space. “I do try and run into a bit of space, but I do love going through people rather than round.”

High energy was, and still is, a Maud characteristic. “I was very energetic,” she says. “And I was the messy child, always covered in something, I just didn’t care really, I just wanted to be out there having fun really. 

“I think I’ve kept my messiness and I’ve always been clumsy too,” she continues. “I’m always tripping over stuff. Everyone takes the piss out of me training, because I’m always on the floor, but I think it’s good because I’m prepared for, you know, falling over in a game, so I don’t injure myself…” 

As she considers her own brilliant excuse for falling over, another thought tumbles in. “It’s weird,” she says, “because I’m so uncoordinated, but yet when I’ve got a rugby ball in my hands, I’m kind of okay.”

Few can doubt that. With ball in hand, Maud always finds ‘space’, even if it means clearing opponents out of it first. Since making her debut for England as a twenty-year-old prop in 2021 (against the Black Ferns), she’s won 35 caps (four tries), back-to-back Grand Slams for England, and repeated the same trick in club rugby, winning the last two Premiership Women’s Rugby titles: a 34-19 win over Exeter Chiefs at ‘Queensholm’ and a 36-24 defeat of Bristol Bears at Sandy Park last season. That she achieved the past two wins playing on different sides of the front row, shows what a complete player she is: loving every technical aspect of scrummaging, relishing collisions and with carrying second nature, it’s little wonder that she’s seen as pivotal to England’s ambitions to break their World Cup hoodoo later this year. “We’ve been deemed the best for a while,” explains Maud, “but we haven’t won two World Cups in a row now – we’ve come second – and because they’re the pivotal thing, are we really the best in the world if we’ve not won one?

“We need to win a World Cup because that’s when it counts.

“But,” she continues, “I think being at home, being in England, we’re in the place where women’s rugby is biggest at the minute. I think with the increases in attendances and the increased visibility for everyone, it’s going to be wild.”

Maud made quick work of finding herself at the top of the game. After playing rugby with the boys for as long as the rules allowed, she moved to a girls’ side at Gosford All Blacks, where she’d earn age grade honours for the South West, and then a move to Wasps. While on a sports scholarship at Brunel University, she made her debut for Wasps as a teenager. “Giselle [Mather] was the first female coach I had [on a regular basis] and she really filled me with lots of confidence, she was really, really good for me at Wasps.”

She moved to Gloucester partly to be closer to her family in Oxford. “I wasn’t enjoying rugby as much,” she says of her final days Wasps. “And I think uni was coming to an end, I just wanted to change, and that was the first year clubs would get in contact with me, and Gloucester were really keen. I think the biggest factor, to be fair, was it was very close to Oxford as well, because I do like going home.

“I was lucky I did [move] to be honest, because then obviously, whilst we were at the World Cup, Wasps folded and I think that would have been a real big extra stress for me. 

“All the girls that were still at Wasps were pretty stressed out finding out they were clubless as the season had started,” she says, looking back. “It was definitely the right timing. And I’ve really enjoyed my time at Gloucester, the group of girls, and obviously winning helps as well. Winning helps everything. But I think just mainly [I am] grateful for the bond we have as a team [which] is incredible.”

We meet Maud for the second part of our interview at her family home in Oxford. The Muirs have reunited, as they often do, for a Sunday roast. “I’m not even that much of a roast dinner fan,” considers Maud. “I think there’s so much effort for it for very little reward – but meal times have always been important.

“We would always sit around the table for dinner, no question about it, it wasn’t even an option,” she continues. “And I’m so glad, because I know a lot of families sit in front of the telly and eat dinner, but it was a really good time for us.”

Maud’s dad was a surveyor and mum a teacher, and she appreciates that, together with being close to her siblings – she even gets on with her sister now – she’s had it pretty good. “I don’t think I had many challenges at all,” she says of her upbringing. “I was very, like, very, what’s the word? Lucky, I guess. I didn’t really face many challenges at all growing up.” 

And she loves her home city. “It’s amazing, I’m so grateful to my parents that we got to grow up here, it’s such a stunning city,” she says of Oxford. “There so much green space, we go on loads of walks and stuff and it’s just so nice to show friends how lovely the city is.

“There’s so much to do without actually doing anything, especially in summer; you can just go and sit in a park or go punting.”

Punting is a favourite. “For an uncoordinated person, I’m actually pretty good at punting,” she says of her river skills. “It’s all about having a steady base, and don’t keep the pole in the riverbed for too long, otherwise it could get stuck.

“We’ve had a few accidents in the river with people falling in, my friend did once,” continues Maud. “They were getting off the boat, and then this other boat knocked into ours and it was like a film – she grabbed onto the riverside and her legs were still on the boat. It was so slow, and then, splat, she was in the river. It’s really shallow though, so she was fine.”

In the week we meet with Maud, she’s preparing for her next semi-final, this one against Bristol Bears, as the PWR season comes to a premature end due to the forthcoming Rugby World Cup. 

The biggest news story of this campaign however, is undoubtedly the arrival at Bristol of USA international and Olympian, Ilona Maher, together with her 4.9m Instagram followers. “I feel like it’s a tricky topic, because, it’s so good for the game, it’s so incredible,” she says of Maher’s arrival. “But also, the things that she’s been doing, a lot of the girls have been doing already, they’ve just not been covered by the media. Like, for example, we stay out [on the pitch, meeting the fans]  after the England games for hours on end. And there was a video, saying, ‘it’s so good that Ilona has stayed out, for however long, after a Bristol game’… 

“And that is so good, but sometimes, I think, other people have done it as well.”

Maud’s reluctant to cast any aspersions, she is after all probably the nicest person you could ever meet, but she has a point. Although she immediately lists all the good things Maher has done for the game, as if feeling guilty about making the previous point. “She said, ‘you might come to watch me, but then stay for the rugby’ or something like that, which I thought was pretty good. She’s not just wanting them to just watch her, she wants more people to watch rugby, so hopefully that continues without her being here. 

“And I think it should do because the games are getting more exciting.”

While Gloucester-Hartpury have plenty of star power of their own – twenty or so  internationals, including a healthy chunk of the current Wales squad, and England stalwarts such as Mo Hunt, Zoe Aldcroft and Tatyana Heard – Maud is keen to highlight some of her perhaps lesser-known team-mates. In the same breath as talking about Maher’s impact, she says she believes a lot of female rugby players are underappreciated, and certainly worthy of sponsorship. “Look at Pip Hendy, for example,” she says, giving us a first example. “She’s a young, young winger [21], but I really relate to her, she’s very similar. 

“I see myself in her quite a lot, always falling over and, like me, keen to speak to her opinion, sometimes a bit too much, but she’s just very much herself, and she doesn’t change that for anyone.  And, yeah, she’s hilarious.

“Then you’ve got Mia Venner, she’s had quite a few big injuries, and she’s so funny. She comes across like she really doesn’t care, and she doesn’t want to try hard, but honestly, she’s such a good player. 

“I used to play with her at Gosford All Blacks, she was my little scrum half and now she’s on the wing, tearing it up. She got capped by England once, and it was quite a hard game, she came on, and then hasn’t played for England since. She’s had an ACL, had lots of injuries, but continues to tear it up for us. 

“She’s so good, and she’s a funny, funny goose as well.”

As with many across the game, Maud says she struggles to find the balance when it comes to the media, always conscious of both saying too much and saying too little. “When you get interviewed, you want to say your true opinion, but you don’t ever want to come across badly. So, it’s really hard; you don’t want to lie, because I do want to say my opinion, but I also don’t want to have repercussions if my opinions are wrong…”

It’s perhaps thinking exactly like this that makes you want to hear more from Maud. She loves her rugby, she loves her friends, she loves her family, she’s mindful of not upsetting people, and she makes gifts for friends and even invents board games to while away the hours. 

The contrast between this off-the-pitch persona and then switching on beast mode for games is what makes Maud, and indeed rugby, so intriguing. Just as she loves her family’s random love of ‘small things’ – they have quite the collection of miniature-sized trinkets around the house – she also loves smashing it in the gym. “I do like the gym,” she says. “I like feeling strong and feeling DOMS  [delayed onset muscle soreness] the day after, although it’s painful, I love that feeling. 

“I do dread running sessions, but once I’m actually into it, it’s fine.”

Nothing quite compares with Red Roses training. “The hardest sessions, especially with England, are when you do like scrum, into maul, into pick and gos; that is the hardest session, you’re exerting so much.

“Even just the muscle power involved in the scrums is just brutal, especially when it’s like the sixteen best, strongest English people in the elite world of rugby, all pushing against each other. Oh my gosh, the pain that you’re in. And then you go into a maul, which is the same thing, but you have a run up. And then you go into pick and goes, which is basically just diving at the floor… you’re just so exhausted after, and then you go into normal training, you have to run around, and your legs are hanging on for dear life because they’re so heavy from the ground.”

And of those sixteen England players, who stands out for Maud? “Sarah Bern, she’s a big role model for me,” she says. “We obviously play the same position, but I think she was probably the first of a new era of props where, yes, it is about the scrummaging, but you see the things that she does in open play, it’s crazy. She runs through people, her footwork, her change of direction is actually mad. I could only dream of having that. 

“I definitely played differently to her, I probably would truck it up the middle a bit more, go into contact a bit more, but it’s a good mix, I think, you know, whether she starts, I start, or someone else starts, and we come off the bench. I think it’s kind of a good dynamic to have healthy competition.”

The theme of our chat with Maud has been wide-ranging; in trying to tell her origin story, we’ve gone from punting and Tuck Tuck, to family dinners, collecting ‘small things’, and trying to learn the harmonica. 

Before we leave Maud and the Muirs to their roast dinner, we ask her to summarise what makes her ‘different gravy’? What’s her super power? “Probably my collisions,” she says. “My contact, and collisions are probably my super power, but off pitch, I think it’s how I make light of situations and trying to make people smile, make people laugh, just relax people a bit.

“Because I think, even in a professional environment you kind of need that because I don’t think everything needs to be really serious all the time.” 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Theo McInnes

Illustration by Xtima

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

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