https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/to-c ... 1650166117
RUGBY UNION | STEPHEN JONES
To create a team from nothing is both a marvellous and a fiendish experience
Stephen Jones
, Rugby Correspondent
Sunday April 17 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
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Only about a minute of play had elapsed at the ground of Newbury RFC, but already I wondered what on earth we had done. Should we run on and ask the referee to scrap the game?
It was the first time that a girls’ team representing our club, Maidenhead, had ever played. We had founded the section at the start of this season, with about four guaranteed attendees, and the aim of creating only an under-13 team. But the girls and their parents wanted to bring their siblings, other relations, school mates.
So suddenly we had about seven different age groups, a thundering great nightmare that needed coaching at seven different speeds, and yet a nightmare which, frankly, we were joyously happy to live through.
But back to Newbury panic stations. It was a day when one of those storms that they name had come raging in, with driving, sleet-laden, freezing rain that reduced the pitch to a quagmire. Exposure was a real danger.
And the rugby? Hard to watch. We had practised all the contact phases, taught them how to tackle safely, how to operate through the mini-breakdown phases that are allowed for the younger girls. The girls were anxious to play matches against another team and so we entered what is called a “pitch up and play” event at Newbury.
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What happens is that the local clubs bring whatever players they have — they may have 20 or two or anywhere in between, and teams are combined to make up the numbers. We had enough numbers for our own team, but no experience.
Jones oversees training at Maidenhead
Jones oversees training at Maidenhead
PETER TARRY/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD
We were quickly try after try down. Every time one of our girls approached contact or tried to make a tackle, I winced. Towards the end Ruth had scored a try, our try. Somehow the girls got through, walked off frozen stiff and soaked through.
We played a second game, in which our valiant Ruby started making some runs up the middle and Abi down the wing. But after the second game we dragged everyone back into the warmth of the clubhouse, and even though we were due to play one more game we decided to call the end of play on humanitarian grounds.
Then we were approached by a deputation. The girls wanted to play on. We had a show of hands. Almost everybody’s hand went up. They actually ran out, laughing their way to the pitches. At the end of the day the parents scraped away the mud, volunteered to launder the kit, made an inventory of the fingers and toes of their offspring, found all intact.
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Why so panicky? It is about 30 years since this newspaper first covered women’s rugby, decades before our rivals. I did realise that female players are tough as old boots, as well as men. And I realised that at the end of their first matches, there was something shining in the eyes of the team.
The experience has rekindled Jones’s love of the sport
The experience has rekindled Jones’s love of the sport
PETER TARRY/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD
To create a team from nothing is both a marvellous and a fiendish experience. When we started, there was only Jane, who like me had administered an age group in which her son had played, and me. We had our moments, notably when Jane told me to take what John Arlott, the cricket writer, once described as “a spectacular if unlikely means of leaving”. One had to learn about periods, hormones, signs of possible abuse or depression, the child protection formalities — for the best reasons.
We were lucky — outrageously lucky — with our parents; pitchside and elsewhere, parents can be famously nightmarish. Four dads proved to have the rugby wisdom to help coaching. For next season, when we are running girls’ teams at three age groups, Jo and Mark are becoming age-group managers. The main club, ever supportive, are giving us new kit, fleeces and other support.
And our most priceless move of all? We felt strongly that the team needed a woman in charge, and did we ever find one. We were put in touch with Maud Muir, then an emerging 20-year-old prop with Wasps. We heard that she may want to add coaching to her CV. The girls adored her from the start. Then she made the England squad, came on as a replacement against New Zealand, helped to demolish their scrum and has played throughout the Six Nations.
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The girls have followed her like affectionate lambs. Emma, our cartoonist, has renamed our club Maudenhead. It all reminds you of the selflessness, the sense of wider responsibility, of the international women players of the era. Rugby for women and girls has so much about it that reminds you of some of the lost goodness of the male game.
Things really began to take off when we laid on a Friday night game in which the Abbey Club came to play in three age groups, with the youngest girls playing their own game in the in-goal. We had conceded a few tries in the under-13 game when suddenly Freida broke away from defence and started carving her way through.
She was running towards the tryline and the stand, which by now was filling with parents and guests and passers-by. As Freida approached the line, the whole stand rose in excitement. Freida touched down, and ran quickly back as if slightly embarrassed by the furore. A few of us felt embarrassed too, but only by the tears that had come to the eye.
Last week we heard that Maisie, one of some exceptional under-15 players that we have, had become our first representative player. She had made the county squad. Will it go to her head? That’s Maisie, who takes the warm-up; encourages everyone, welcomes newcomers, carries the tiny tot player round on her shoulders. So probably not.
And the personal highlight? Ellie was just too cold to play in the final game at Newbury. She was shivering audibly. We hoped that she was not put off. In our next game, she got the ball under pressure. She looked up, saw some space, and, holding the ball in two hands in front of her, carved beautifully and at pace though every line of the defence, and ran on to score. It was a crown jewel of a try.
It is too much to say that it was the moment that made all the hassle worthwhile, of course. Or is it?
25 players have been given annual part-time contracts to allow them to train between 80-130 days with the national team 
), but we're not likely to shout out abuse or go after them in person on social media. What's wrong with these people? 