A watershed season for women’s rugby in England ends on Saturday with Saracens and Harlequins heading up the M1 to Franklin’s Gardens for the Premier 15s final.
The repeat of last year’s inaugural domestic final, in which Saracens squeezed home to win 24-20 in Ealing, rounds off a campaign in which Twickenham’s decision to put England’s top 28 players under contract helped the national side complete a one-sided grand slam victory over amateur rivals.
Saturday’s meeting in Northampton, though, could well be decided by a largely unknown 18-year-old who is studying for her A-levels and whose rugby life is a world away from the professional players who will be around her.
Ellie Green, the Harlequins fly-half, is studying biology, maths and PE but the playmaker is happy to bark out orders to her international teammates. Green finished as the top points-scorer in the league, with 126, including 116 from kicks. In what is expected to be a close match, that place-kicking could be vital.
“Ellie may turn up to training sessions with her school books but she is a key player for us,” says Gary Street, the Harlequins head coach, who was in charge of England when they won the World Cup five years ago. Green, an England Under-20 international, looks certain to be challenging Katy Daley-Mclean, the world’s leading fly‑half, by the time of the next World Cup in 2021.
Harlequins finished the regular season seven points behind Saracens but they are the only side to inflict defeat on their rivals this season and there is real optimism they can reverse last season’s final defeat. Saracens may have the best pack in the league but they are without three injured England forwards – Bryony Cleall, Vicky Fleetwood and Marlie Packer. The loss of the experienced back-row Packer, who has had an operation on a shoulder she injured during the Six Nations, is a particularly heavy blow.
Harlequins have the try-scoring machine Jess Breach, the 21-year-old wing who has made such a devastating start to international 15-a-side rugby since her switch from sevens, scoring 20 tries in seven games for England. Street’s side know that, if Green, her international half-back partner, Leanne Riley, and the Quins captain and centre, Rachael Burford, can help spread the play wide, Breach can cause all sorts of problems.
“We have to close Jess down and not allow her to get outside our defence. We know how dangerous she can be,” says Charlotte Clapp, the wing who will captain Saracens in her second final. “Quins are a really strong side and we know the game will be close.”
Harlequins know they still have to be at the top of their game if they are to overturn last season’s result. Quins won a tight affair against their rivals 20-17 last October but in the return fixture they surrendered a 16-point lead to lose 31-28 in the dying seconds.
Burford, a World Cup winner in 2014, says: “In that game at Saracens we played our best 70 minutes of the season and followed it with our worst 10 minutes. We need to keep our foot down for 80 minutes. Our semi-final showed we can do that but we know we haven’t quite hit our full potential.
“Looking back at the final last year we felt heartbroken, thinking of the opportunities we had to win it. But we’re a year on and, aside from a couple of us, the squad is still very young. The semi-final was a huge pressure for us, so to perform the way we did bodes very well. The women’s game here is coming on in leaps and bounds and professional contracts have taken it to a new level. We played on a smaller pitch with inflatable goalposts in my first sevens international. To see where the game is now is phenomenal.”
These two sides are blazing a trail for women’s clubs. Of those 28 contracted England players, 15 are with Saracens or Harlequins. Street, meanwhile, takes heart in that 26-10 semi-final victory over Loughborough Lightning, arguably their best performance of the season.
“I’m not saying they didn’t want to win but you could tell by our body language we wanted to win more. You haven’t seen the best of us yet,” the Harlequins head coach said.
