Shaunagh Brown
Shaunagh Brown searched for her opponent’s name. If she was going to fight for the first time, she wanted to know who she was facing. Google told her nothing. The gym she supposedly trained at knew nothing. Then, into the ring walked a European silver medallist. She’d been stitched up.
“Even now, just thinking about it, a tear is starting to well up,” says Shaunagh Brown, reliving her now famous post-match interview last May. “I can’t watch it back because I’ll start crying again.”
When Harlequins won the Allianz Premier 15s title, it brought to an end a run of Saracens dominance that few expected to finish that afternoon. It also showcased the quality of women’s club rugby and how far it had come. “I challenge anyone to say that women’s rugby is not good enough,” said Shaunagh at the time.
A couple of weeks after the final, she posted the clip on Instagram with these words: ‘There are a lot of people out there who have never seen me like this but this is me. If my heart could speak, this is what it would say every single day when I wake up proud to be a woman.
‘First comes the acceptance that we currently live in a man’s world and only then, can the engine for change get started.
‘To those male and female who get it (because there is an awful lot of men out there who do truly get it), and to those who don’t, maybe one day you will.
‘But I’m also a little bit jealous of your rose-tinted world.’
On BT Sport’s Twitter feed alone, it had 100,000 views, eclipsing much of the broadcaster’s rugby clips, including content from the Gallagher Premiership.
“It was this big release for all the hard work,” she says, “for all those shit days that you go through, all the times you’re hurting, all the mornings you don’t want to get up and train. Days like that, and the aftermath, make it all worth it.
“It was the third time we’d met Saracens in the final,” she continues. “So, it was everything that we put in for the last three years, or four years because of Covid. The build-up, the frustrations and the elements that you can’t control.
“At the final whistle, everyone was hugging each other. And then I saw Ali (Stokes), our communications guy, walking over.
“Now, I’m thinking to myself, out of the five games I played last year in the Six Nations, I got drug tested at four of them. So, he’s coming over to get me to take a test.
“I said, ‘Ali, please not now. Just let me enjoy the moment.’ He said, ‘no, you’ve just won Player of the Match’.
“So, that set me off again,” she admits. “Then I went over for the interview. I couldn’t really hear much of what (Sarra Elgan) was saying. If I don’t know what the question is, but I’ve got something to say, then I’ll say it and sound like I’m answering you! Obviously nothing was planned in terms of what I said. It was all just part of that release and letting it out.”
This is now a crucial period for women’s rugby, culminating in next October’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand; it’s a time for the sport to connect with more fans, giving it the bigger audience it deserves.
When asked how you build an audience, Vic Wakeling, the man who ran Sky Sports for twenty years, once said, ‘a lot of it is about personalities’ and Shaunagh is one of biggest in the game right now. If she has something to say, hen she will say it.
We’re forty minutes into the interview and the victory over Saracens is pretty much the first time we talk purely about rugby.
The conversation veers from her hatred of Love Island (“it’s everything that is wrong about society”), to her previous job as a firefighter, how she got stitched up in her only professional boxing match, systemic racism at the Olympics, and the impact of periods and menstrual cycles on player performance.
We meet at the Holiday Inn, Guildford. Admittedly, that doesn’t conjure up images of being a ‘nerve-centre’ for the reigning English champions in both men’s and women’s rugby. The hotel is, however, next door to the team’s training centre at Surrey Sports Park.
Harlequins recently moved back here after lockdown restrictions had been lifted. Outside one of the team’s many offices and meeting rooms on the first floor of this sprawling hotel complex are cubby holes, which serve as mailboxes.
Each one has a Post-it note with the name of each player. Except one: the one that has already acquired a nickname and reads ‘Shaunagh ‘Fan Mail’ Brown’.
“Ha! Yeah, I don’t get a lot of fan mail but there was a letter that arrived yesterday,” she says. “Getting messages on Instagram or Facebook or wherever is great, but there’s still something real special about getting a handwritten letter.
“It’s a privilege that someone has taken time out of their day, to sit down and write. So, I’ll write back on Marvel Comics notepaper, sign it and send a picture. That’s the special stuff, isn’t it?”
Shaunagh only took up rugby aged 25. Now 31, she is determined to embrace every opportunity, to reply to every letter and message that comes with being a Harlequins and England player, and use it as a platform to reach the widest possible audience. “Sometimes I think, ‘right, just go to training, play well and then you’ll get more photoshoots and more attention!” she laughs. “If you’re better at rugby then more people will listen to what you have to say, and that’s when I can do the positive stuff around gender equality and racial equality.”
Our conversation comes in a year when more sports stars are speaking out on social issues, even if some of our MPs would prefer that they stuck to bland platitudes about winning matches.
It puts one in mind of the Fast Show sketch (before Shaunagh’s time, admittedly) that was a parody of public information films, titled ‘Women, Know Your Limits’. Harry Enfield narrates over a scene at a 1930s dinner party, ‘the lady has foolishly attempted to join the conversation with a wild and dangerous opinion of her own. Women, Know Your Limits. Let your thoughts be plain and simple’.
At the time we sit down to talk, Alice Dearing becomes the first black woman to swim for Team GB at the Olympics. In the build-up to the Summer Games, the International Swimming Federation, aka FINA, banned the use of ‘Soul Cap’ – a swimming cap designed for people with Afro-textured hair. “On the face of it, it’s just a swimming cap,” says Brown, “But actually, it affects a certain proportion of the population a lot more than the others. It’s a racist policy, but it’s not seen as a racist policy. It’s not giving her any advantage whatsoever. So why did they have to ban it?
“And you think ‘who in that boardroom is making those decisions?’. It’s people hiding behind an organisation or an association.”
In making that decision, FINA seemingly ignored its stated mission to grow the sport, reach new audiences, and, above all, get more people swimming. “I still think we’re probably eight to ten years away from that in terms of everyone on a contract with a reasonable wage, like a living wage,” says Shaunagh of her own sport. “Progress is there. It’s moving in the right direction, but at a very slow pace.
“The positive side is to celebrate that progress, but also remind ourselves that the women are still a long way off. If you look at men, they turned professional in 1995, and women only went professional in 2019.
“But we can play catch-up a lot quicker because we can learn from the mistakes made in the men’s game, the jump to becoming full-time, training, and how bodies recover after matches.
“Even things like encouraging more research (into women’s rugby) and the effects of periods and the menstruation cycle, and doing research that relates to women as well as men. There was some new research about head injuries and concussions, and then you read it and realise it all relates to men.
“There are also issues around pregnancy and maternity leave. What does that look like for a carrier [of the baby]? At the moment you have England players who have got babies, but their partners, their wife or their girlfriend was the carrier. If I got pregnant as an England and Harlequins rugby player tomorrow, what does that look like for me?
“At the moment, I couldn’t tell you. How long could I train for? When do I stop? When can I start again? All these things require more research and looking at the wider picture. But we have got university students taking those on projects.”
Last year, the RFU partnered with Leeds Beckett University to study the impact of menstrual cycles. This followed on from Chelsea FC introducing individual training programmes that take into account those cycles and the impact they have both in terms of performance but also preventing injuries.
But addressing those issues won’t put more bums on seats, or sofas. And, Shaunagh says, beyond the financial challenges facing club rugby and, crucially, getting more airtime, it’s incumbent on the men’s game to help promote the women. “When having a conversation about men’s rugby there’s probably a story to talk about within the women’s game as well,” she says. “When we talk about players, we can match up Tom Curry to Emmy Robinson or Alex Dombrandt to Sarah Beckett and look at us as players rather than men or women.
“It’s also about the stories behind the players,” insists Shaunagh, “That’s what people want to know about. We can talk tactics and what the game looks like, a lot of players would rather talk about that. But actually, there’s a lot of cool stories behind who we are.”
Shaunagh is a case in point: gas fitter, commercial diver, shot putter and hammer thrower. Although her rugby career almost ended before it started.
After finishing 14th in the hammer in the Commonwealth Games in 2014, she quit athletics the following year and had planned to turn her back on professional sport altogether. That plan lasted two weeks.
She tried her hand at sevens for Medway Rugby and was spotted by Mark Lyons from Wise Guys Promotions who was sponsoring the opposition team. “He said, ‘I’ve watched you play and how you hand off a few people. How’d you feel about boxing?’ I said, ‘I feel fantastic about boxing!’.
“I trained for about eight weeks,” explains Shaunagh. “They said that they had someone perfect for me (to fight), and she would be around the same weight of 85 kilos. She’d had a couple of fights, but that was fine. You know, what’s a few fights between friends?
“Literally, the day before the fight I got a phone call,” recalls Shaunagh, “‘Your opponent has pulled out but we found someone new’. They told me her name was Xena Ball. So, I looked her up. Nothing. They said ‘oh, she’s done this and this…’. Nothing. They told me which gym she trained at. Nothing. Of course, I think ‘this is suspect’.
“And then when I got to York Hall I weighed in, but not at the same time as her. She weighed in at 115 kilos. I was the ‘house’ fighter, so I came out second and that was the first time I saw her.
“Her name is actually Sarah Knight, and she’d been boxing for ten years. She was a silver medallist at the European Championships, represented Scotland, and runs a gym with her husband in Mitcham.
“After the fight, they apologised. ‘We didn’t know until the last minute and the promoter wouldn’t take no for an answer because they couldn’t find anyone else.’”
Still, Shaunagh only lost on points and the Knights offered to train her. “I thought, ‘this is not for me’.”
Rugby took her from local Kent side Aylesford Bulls to Harlequins (who took over the Bulls and renamed the side in 2017). Playing on the flank, Shaunagh was offered a full-time England contract in 2019, a time when she was a firefighter with the Kent & Medway Fire Service. “The question was ‘do I want to completely give that all up to play professional rugby, which is probably only gonna last maybe four or five years, and start again on the career ladder?’.
“Sport was my life when I was younger, but as you get older that changes. I believe I’m at an advantage by having something else to look forward to.
“Then I remembered reaching a point when I said to my athletics coach, ‘I want to be full-time’ and she said ‘okay, that’s great. How are you going to live?’ My parents couldn’t have afforded it and I’ve always wanted to pay for things myself.
“The decision came down to having that privilege of being a female professional athlete.
“The trade-off was staying in constant communication with the fire service who were able to change my role to inclusion and diversity officer.”
But the contract came with a caveat. “I was told straight away by England ‘you play prop or you won’t get a contract’.
“In my head, I was thinking, the club like me at number six, so I’ll carry on there. But obviously, that meant I wasn’t progressing as a prop.
“After that first year of England turning professional, there was a meeting with the club coaches and international coaches, etc...
“At the end, they said ‘any questions, Shaunagh?’
“‘Yeah, actually.’ I asked the England forwards coach at that time, ‘what would it take for you to consider taking me back to the back row?’
“He was taken aback by the question.
“‘Do you think you’re good enough?’
“‘Yeah’.
“This went back and forth, to the point where he said, ‘I’ll speak to the head coach, and I’ll give you an answer’.
“A few days later, he phoned me and said, ‘your choices are that we extend your contract and you play at prop, or you return to the back row, and we won’t extend your full-time contract, but we will still consider you for selection’.
“It went back to that privilege of being a professional sportswoman. Yeah, I could take a chance of maybe getting in the back row. Or I could just go at it full throttle, and try to be the best prop in the world.”
She spoke to Harlequins scrum coach Adam Jones who reassured Shaunagh that she had the right qualities to be a prop. Then she started putting in the extra hours with (former forwards coach) Karen Findley. “I like to think it showed in my performances the next year and the year after in terms of how much my scrummaging has come along,” she says.
Shaunagh is currently on sabbatical from the fire service, but her experience of working for them has helped both to keep her grounded and manage the mental side of the game. “It’s important to remember that life is not sport,” she says. “When you have a bad training session, you can’t dwell on it for the next four days, because you’ve got other things to get on with.
“That was a powerful thing for me in terms of when I was in the fire service and playing professional sport without getting paid for it.
“I could be having a rubbish game on Saturday afternoon, but I’ve got to get over it because I’ve got to work on Saturday night.
“And when I’m running into a house trying to get a kid out of a fire, he or she’s not gonna care that I dropped a ball!”
Whether she goes back and retrains as a firefighter may rest on what happens over the next twelve to thirteen months culminating in the Rugby World Cup. She recently appeared in a promo which heralded MasterCard becoming the first Global Partner of World Rugby’s ‘Women in Rugby’ programme, and a partner for the next two women’s World Cups. She also did a stint as a commentator for BT Sport.
A lot can happen between now and then. But if she makes Simon Middleton’s XV, and has a good tournament in New Zealand other opportunities will surely come her way.
For now, though, her focus is on picking up where she left off against Saracens and successfully defending the Allianz Premier 15s title. And Harlequins made a statement of intent by signing Ellie Kildunne from Wasps.
“For me, the big ones to look out for are Exeter because of what they achieved in a Covid year, beating both us and Saracens,” Shaunagh says. “Wasps also beat Saracens, which was a big moment for the league. You’ve also got Sale Sharks, who’ve got the facilities, the equipment, the coaches, the backing.
“So Wasps and Sale are going to be forces to be reckoned with, but especially Exeter because they’re learning more things about the league, like how to manage those long journeys but still play a good game of rugby.
“Then you’ve got Bristol Bears,” she continues, emphasising the growing depth in the club game. “They’ve had a lot more integration this year with the men and women and Dave Ward going in as head coach. He’s come from Harlequins with all that he can bring coming from a Premiership men’s team and taking it to a Premier women’s team as head coach. It sounds like they’ve got a lot more backing from the men’s team and Dave will be answerable to the Bristol men’s coaches.
“That will be a good one to look out for and see what kind of progress they can make on the pitch because of the support they will get off it.”
As for Shaunagh, she’s just going to continue doing what she’s doing, saying things that need to be said. “It’s about humanising things,” she says. “We are fallible, we do cry, we get upset, we get happy.
“And it’s so powerful that momentum is now picking up, that people are realising you can speak out. You don’t have to, because some people don’t like talking out about different issues.
“But if people don’t accept it, then you don’t have the privilege of watching me at my best, because you won’t take me at my worst.”
Story by Ryan Herman
Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley
This extract was taken from issue 15 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.
