Rugby Star Sarah Hunter on the Importance of Women's Rugby for The North
Hot on the heels of their fourth Women's Six Nations Grand Slam in a row, the Red Roses will be in Sunderland for the opening game of the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 this August
For Sarah, one of the most decorated rugby players of all time, former captain of the England team, current Red Roses coach and new mum, 2025 has been a big year already – and the best is yet to come. We caught up with her in the middle of the Women’s Six Nations, and the upcoming Women’s Rugby World Cup has her reflecting on her early days in the North East, where she first discovered her love for the sport.
‘I grew up in Newcastle, in Benton, and I had a head teacher who opened doors and made things inclusive for students at the school,’ she explains. ‘She had people come in to do rugby with the boys and she told them they had to do it for the girls as well. One afternoon I played rugby and just fell in love with it.’
The world of women’s sports was vastly different when Sarah got her start, particularly in the North East. ‘I didn’t even know there was women’s rugby. I purely played it for the love of it and it wasn’t until we went on a trip from Newcastle down to London with the North East Under 16s team to watch women’s rugby that I realised I want to play for England. That was when the bug really took hold.’
Even then, players only began to be offered professional contracts for women’s rugby from 2019, after Sarah had been playing for the sheer joy of it for more than a decade. ‘When I was lucky enough to be one of the first selected back in 2019, I felt incredibly grateful that I got to call my hobby and my passion my job, and it seems really bizarre that in that space of time the game had progressed so much.’
The change in attitude towards women’s sports in recent years is not lost on Sarah. ‘I was at the Newcastle Sunderland Women’s Derby the other week and I was just blown away by it,’ she says. ‘I went there as a young girl watching Newcastle. The possibility that women could play there – you just wouldn’t have thought it.’
From the outside, Sarah’s career highlights may seem obvious (being named World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year in 2016, receiving an MBE for services to rugby, leading the Red Roses to the Wold Cup final in 2017 – we could go on), but Sarah’s personal victories look very different. ‘It’s maybe not an individual success but rugby in the North East for girls and women is not as strong as in other areas,’ she explains. ‘One of the things I am incredibly proud of is the fact that in 2014 when we won the World Cup we had Katy Daley-McLean as captain and I was vice captain. Katy comes from South Shields and I grew up in Benton so you’ve got two Northern girls leading their country toward cup success. Looking back now, that was pretty special.’
Spending years in the sport has allowed Sarah to view her set-backs in a different light too. ‘As you mature you have a better way of coping with disappointments. When you’re younger, everything is the end of the world, when actually it’s part and parcel of rugby, it’s the nature of the game,’ Sarah says, reeling off an impressive list of past injuries including a knee operation and a nasty broken wrist. ‘I thought “Oh my god, maybe my body is not meant to play rugby!” But then as you get older, you realise it’s unfortunate but it comes with the sport. You break it down into more manageable chunks that you can tick off and process. My partner had to remind me as I got older and I was getting closer to my last World Cup and had a few injuries, that you can be disappointed and frustrated for 24 hours, but then focus on what’s going to get you back on the pitch.’
Though she retired from playing in 2023 and became a coach for the Red Roses, Sarah’s love of the sport is as strong now as it’s ever been. ‘I coached when I was at university and one of my first jobs post-university was as a community rugby coach,’ she says. ‘It’s always been something that I’ve really enjoyed. I love to make people better. I’ve had so much support and help from coaches and have seen the massive impact they’ve had on my career, so having a small impact on someone else’s is a really important thing to do. Once I finished playing I was offered a coaching role. It wasn’t the plan, but I guess when England come and offer you a job it’s pretty hard to turn down!’
Currently on maternity leave, Sarah has every intention of seeing the World Cup in-person. ‘I probably would have had a year off in terms of maternity leave, but I’ll be back in time for it because I just don’t want to miss it. We start preparation for that in June and I know how amazing the World Cup is going to be as I was fortunate enough to play in a home World Cup back in 2010. It was definitely not on the scale that this one is going to be either, as 15 years down the line the game has changed enormously. We’re playing around the country so that we can showcase women’s rugby and I think that’s really exciting.’
The fact that the opening game will be played in the North East makes it all the more special. ‘When I got told I thought it was amazing! Just to know that it’s coming to the North East where people are so passionate about sport. There’s so many great players coming out of the woodwork from a rugby perspective up here. I just think it could really boost people,’ Sarah says. ‘They need to be able to see things and if you can see it you can be inspired to do it. Anyone attending that game on that day, that could be the spark that ignites them to say they want to play for England. That happened to me when I was 16 and I’m really hoping it can be the catalyst to inspire a new generation of young women and girls to take up rugby. That would be incredible.’
Inspiring the next generation hits close to home for Sarah. ‘Hopefully for kids growing up now because they see it, it’s normal for them. They watch it on TV and they become accepting of it. They’re the future generation so if they see it as normal then hopefully it’s not going to be a question of “should women and girls be doing this?” because they’re the ones who are going to have influence and be the decision makers.
‘I’ve got a little girl now and I want to be able to show her that actually, you can be a mum and you can still come back and work in professional sport at the top end. She’s too young to know now, but hopefully one day it might inspire her to do whatever she wants to do. It might not be sport but to have ambition and to have drive, hopefully it will instil that.’
