It’s not always glamorous at the peak of elite women’s rugby. Two days after helping England win back-to-back Six Nations grand slams, Emily Scarratt is sitting in her car on a cold night in Loughborough, cursing her lack of foresight in turning down a US college basketball scholarship 14 years ago. “It’s absolutely freezing, the rain’s starting to come down and I’ve got to go out and train. I think an indoor sport would definitely have been the way forward.”
She doesn’t mean it really. It reinforces, though, just how fortunate rugby is to have her. If you were to conduct a dressing-room poll of the most multi-talented current England players it would probably be Scarratt first, with Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell straining to make the podium. Score the tries, kick the goals, captain the team in your 90th Test and still turn up at your club 48 hours later ready to give more of yourself? If she were male, Scarratt would be being discussed in the hushed tones once reserved for Jonny Wilkinson.
Instead, as with most leading sportswomen, the 30-year-old still has to contend with those unable to see beyond their own sad little prejudices. Last month her former England centre partner Rachael Burford cracked and went on Twitter to call out the dismissive, sexist comments on social media after the Six Nations had been sealed. Implicit was that outstanding role models like Scarratt deserve far better.
Pondered this for a few days and wanted to say something. @EnglandRugby claimed the @SixNationsRugby Saturday. It's one of the biggest competition's in rugby and important we recognise it. Sadly, the ugly side of social media wanted to quash this wonderful achievement. 1/6👇
— Rachael Burford (@RachaelBurf12) October 30, 2020
There are societal issues here, clearly, that go way beyond sport. In Scarratt’s case, though, the casual abuse is utterly ridiculous. As anyone who saw her in Sunday’s 54-0 win over Italy will testify, the centre was a richly deserved winner of the player of the tournament award: long-striding, strong, calm, inspirational. How could you fail to respect such a fine athlete and have no interest in watching her and her teammates’ next games against France this month?
As a farmer’s daughter from Desford, just outside Leicester, Scarratt is not normally the type to make a public fuss. Even the Red Roses’ record points-scorer, though, is starting to wonder aloud just how much more she and her teammates have to do. “Obviously there are still some old and dated views out there which, unfortunately, people still feel they need to share. It comes back to a much bigger issue than women’s rugby. People just need to be kind – if they don’t agree with something then don’t say it.
“I don’t watch certain sports because I know I don’t enjoy them. That’s my choice. If you know you won’t enjoy it, don’t watch it or post about it. If it was me I’d just change channels or move on. I don’t go on social media and air that publicly. That’s the frustration. We’re not trying to pretend we’re anything, we’re just trying to be who we are. Fair play to Burf for speaking out. We’ve got to keep fighting the fight.”
There are numerous other challenges as well. Next year’s World Cup is an obvious target but the road to New Zealand is strewn with complications. Not only has Covid-19 caused many of her friends to lose their England sevens contracts but when Scarratt turns out for Loughborough Lightning against Harlequins Women on Saturday in the Allianz Premier XVs it will be under different laws. How many senior men’s players would regard playing under adapted rules – with barely any scrums and games cut to 70 minutes – as ideal preparation for a major Test?
Few, certainly, would be good enough to switch from 15s to sevens - Scarratt competed at the 2016 Olympics in Rio – and back without breaking stride. If anything, she looks to be playing as well as ever. “I play rugby because I love it. Everyone says that, don’t they? But for me it’s the truth. I wouldn’t still be able to keep doing if it was starting to feel like a task. That’s certainly not the case at the moment.”
It certainly sounded fun after the grand slam was secured at a deserted stadium in Parma. The players were not even allowed to shower afterwards before being whisked back to their hotel but their post-match spirits remained undimmed. “It was a bit strange but it was also oddly nice. Normally you’ve got lots of friends and family there but in this case no one had anywhere to drift to. We could only celebrate with each other so we put on some cheesy songs that everyone was singing and dancing to. There was a bit of Whitney [Houston], obviously. Hang on, that’s doing her a disservice. She’s not cheesy at all.”
Those who argue that England, with the advantage of full-time contracts, could do with stiffer competition are also forgetting the self-imposed pressure that top players like Scarratt place on themselves. “You go through waves in your career. When you burst on to the scene as a youngster, almost anything you do is good because expectations are really low. Then, all of a sudden, expectation rockets.
“People expect you to do those things all the time. When you get a bit older and wiser it’s about releasing that pressure from yourself. It’s still there but it’s about doing the things you know you’re capable of. It’s also easy to do your job reasonably well when you’ve got world-class players all around you.”
Beneath the modesty, though, remains a layer of steely ambition. Scarratt may be a 2014 World Cup winner and the reigning World Rugby women’s player of the year, having been lauded alongside South Africa’s Pieter Steph du Toit in Japan a year ago, but the qualified teacher is not yet entirely fulfilled.
“If you were to write anything down as a perfect story, winning a World Cup in New Zealand would be pretty much top of the list. It’s a huge year for us … we’re going to have to be adaptable along the way but we all know the prize we want. It’s not going to be a smooth ride but it’s really exciting.”
The only other thing left is for the general public to appreciate fully the quality of Scarratt, Sarah Hunter, Katy Daley-McLean, Sarah Bern, Jess Breach and the rest of this super-impressive England squad. “When we’ve played at Twickenham after the men you get an extended crowd who, in many cases, have never seen women’s rugby before. Even if they’re just waiting for the traffic to die down you’ll get people afterwards saying: ‘I really enjoyed it, it’s better than the men’s.’ It’s a case of continuing to make people aware that if you enjoy rugby then, in theory, you should enjoy women’s rugby.
“We’ve taken such huge strides in the sport. There are so, so many positive stories of girls and women, from five years old to 40 years old, who have taken up rugby. Without wishing to sound too dramatic, it has changed people’s lives. That’s the thing we need to be spreading, not the other stuff that appears on social media. We have an excellent platform at the moment to show what a great sport it is. Hopefully lots of people will get on board with that.”
