Having faced a tough childhood, prejudice and cancer, former England rugby captain Paula George is now helping Kiwi kids build their own resilience and happiness.
Paula George was the first woman to appear on the cover of Rugby World magazine; the face of women’s rugby when she captained England’s Red Roses in the early 2000s.
Today, the kids in her eight-year-old son’s rugby team in Auckland are unlikely to have any inkling that their coach was a legend of the game. Or that she's a woman on a mission - one she hopes will make an even bigger impact than she made on the field in her own playing days.
Georgie, as she’s universally known, no doubt prefers a little anonymity – she never enjoyed the fame. She’s simply happy to teach the kids how to tackle, fend and run with the ball – and hopefully give them a few tools to boost their resilience, too.
George is now a Kiwi, having made New Zealand her home back in 2005 after she retired from professional rugby, then followed the Lions tour here - and stayed.
She admits she was torn watching the Red Roses wilt the Black Ferns in two tests in the last fortnight.
“It was great to see how the Roses have developed, especially around the set piece and the speed and go forward at the breakdown,” George says. “But I think it’s a shame the Black Ferns have had no international match exposure for the last two years and that was a factor in their performance.”
Her Kiwi wife, Jo Caird, was the All Blacks’ first official photographer. They met when George was playing rugby in New Zealand, and Rugby World commissioned Caird to shoot a ‘day in the life’ story with the Red Roses fullback.
“But it took us two years to go on a date,” George laughs. After a whirlwind romance, they’ve been together 17 years and have twins, a boy and a girl.
Originally a teacher, the Welsh-born George (who, by the way, also played netball for Wales at the 1991 World Cup) changed her occupation when she came to New Zealand. She retrained as a photographer and videographer, and spent eight years capturing behind-the-scenes images of the All Blacks right up to their victory at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
But now she has a different profession. One where she believes she can make the most difference - helping Kiwi kids to build their resilience and happiness.
Since the start of this year, George has been New Zealand's programme manager for The Resilience Project, an organisation that began in Australia teaching positive mental health strategies to school kids, elite athletes and in workplaces.
She’d been doing video work with the Tania Dalton Foundation, who deliver the project in New Zealand. “Their work really resonated with me,” says George, who’s had many moments in her life where her resilience has been tested.
Three years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer; a 30cm tumour was removed from her abdomen. It took her two years to recover.
She realises that through that ordeal she found two of the three ‘pillars’ of the Resilience Project – gratitude, mindfulness and empathy (otherwise known as GEM).
“Three years ago, I would have said ‘What a load of woo-woo’,” George admits. “But I started writing in a gratitude journal which helped me enormously through this. And now when I start to feel anxious, having practiced mindfulness, I can bring down that level of anxiety.
“I’ve been practising those deliberately for the last three years, and on top of all my experience from sport, it’s become the full package of trying to be resilient, trying to cope on a better level.”
The Resilience Project is in its pilot phase in New Zealand, so far in 14 primary and intermediate schools around the North Island, expanding to 22 next year.
In the past year, they’ve carried out a study with over 6000 children in their partner schools, getting them to fill out a 20-minute online survey with teachers in their classroom. “We’ve been working through the information, and some of it is pretty shocking,” George says.
They found one in four of the pupils, aged eight to 14, experienced anxiety.
The study also showed 28 percent of intermediate and 23 percent of primary pupils reported symptoms of depression.
“Okay, we expected that – it’s similar to what they’re seeing in Australia,” George says. “But one in three kids say they have some, little or no hope. I mean, hope is my ‘why’; what gets me out of bed each day.
“That’s why we want to teach the kids at this early age, so they have these tools growing up.”
George wishes she’d had these tools earlier in her life. She grew up in a Welsh village where she was one of only two children among the 1600 at her high school who weren’t white. It was difficult, she says, but she was “pretty tough.”
She and her four white younger sisters were at the centre of a bitter custody battle, and she ended up living in foster care for a while.
“I was a pretty quiet kid, because I felt that was the best way to get through. To be tough, don’t show the world any weakness,” she says. “I wish I’d had an adult who’d shown me that it’s okay, there’s safety here. It’s about finding that person you can talk to, who you can be vulnerable with.
“If we can get even one child in every class to find that person, to find that bravery to say it’s my aunty, coach or mum, that will make a difference.”
George says she’s still a relatively private person. During her 15-year international sporting career, she had a taste of fame and "hated" it. “I would take living off the grid over being famous,” she says.
“Being one of the first female English rugby players to go pro was hard. We were told women shouldn’t play rugby, ‘You’re weird, you’re hard’. But I just loved playing sport. Those things – gratitude, empathy and mindfulness - would have helped me enormously.”
Ant Ford, general manager of the Tania Dalton Foundation, says George's life experience on and off the sports field has been invaluable to the project.
"She maintains a high level of professionalism and empathy in her role," he says. "But most of all, Georgie possesses a real mana and is absolutely committed to helping young people be their best, by being happy."
George would like to take the Resilience Project beyond schools and to the sports fields. Rather than target the athletes, though, it’s the coaches she thinks would benefit most.
“It would be really cool to work with coaches, and have every session they deliver include some element of GEM. To create a culture of it," she says.
“There are lots of elements of sport that are super healthy, but there are lots of elements that are not. The last couple of years, some sport's cultures have shown that, which is worrying, especially for women’s sport.
“What if we could coach from a culture of compassion, gratitude and empathy? Like empathy to our opposition. You don’t have to hate someone to beat them. We can love them for loving the same game and appreciate their skills.”
George is lucky, she says, to have worked alongside coach Graham Henry (aka Ted) during his All Blacks tenure.
“One thing that stuck with me working with and around Ted for eight years was he talked about being a great man first, and a great rugby player second. Look at the 2011 team he created – the people, the leaders among them, who could see friends amongst their rivals.”
This season was George’s first coaching junior rugby, and she tried to put her new knowledge into play.
“One little boy didn’t want to tackle and I couldn’t work out why,” she says. “The old Georgie would have said ‘C’mon just go and hit him… what’s the matter with you? Go and play soccer’.
“Instead, I took him aside and asked why he didn’t want to tackle the boy on the other team. He said ‘I don’t want to break him’. So I explained ‘If you lead with your shoulder, you won’t get hurt and he won’t get hurt’.
“Three weeks later, he did the most amazing tackle and got player of the day. If I’d done it the old way, he may have dropped out of rugby altogether.
“That’s what I’m going to do in my coaching, create a culture. And I’d love to take the Resilience Project down that path.”
