Lukewarm is no good for Ellie
As a kid, Ellie Kildunne would regularly watch YouTube videos of rugby’s greatest tries, quickest players and hottest steppers; such was her obsession with agility and speed.
Growing up in rural West Yorkshire, playing outside was top of her agenda, and tag among her favourite games. It was perhaps that early love for sprinting and dodging would-be taggers that inadvertently prepared her so well for the day she turned up at Keighley RFC aged six.
“I just remember a lot of boys turning around and laughing at the girl playing,” says Ellie. “They weren’t by the end of the game when I had run around them and scored a few times.”
Ellie was the only girl in a boys’ team, and remembers having to change in and out of kit behind the cover of towels or in cars, because clubhouses did not have changing rooms for her to use. A young female in a male dominant environment, she was determined to prove herself.
“Boys in other teams might try to pick on me, but not when my team mates were there to pick on them back,” she recalls. “I do remember lots of sniggers and laughs toward me, but that did not last very long; I was part of a team that looked out for me.
“They were all my brothers on the pitch and I wanted to work hard for them, prove that girls can do what boys can do, and sometimes even do it better.”
In addition to Keighley RFC, Ellie enjoyed time at West Park Leeds, where she once played against the daughter of her now Red Roses head coach Simon Middleton.
“Any time those sides came against each other it was a big clash. I have heard from different coaches at the time that Simon noticed me then but he never confirmed, and I never asked!”
Ellie’s talents were not just limited to rugby; she played multiple sports from a young age with her neighbours and brother, and remembers kicking any shape of ball whenever there was an opportunity to do so.
“There was a stage in my life where I was playing rugby league on a Saturday morning, football on a Saturday afternoon and rugby union on a Sunday, so hats off to my parents for coming to all of the games.”
Ellie decided to fully focus on rugby union whilst at Hartpury College, and she joined up with Allianz Premier 15s outfit Gloucester-Hartpury for the 2017/18 season. Impressive performances in the competition saw her called into the England squad, though not the one she was expecting.
“I got a call from Jo Yapp saying I hadn’t made it into the U20s squad,” says Ellie. “There wasn’t too much detail on the call either, and I remember being disappointed.
“But then that afternoon I got another call from [England backs coach] Scott Bemand saying ‘we’d really like you to be part of the team’ and I was like ‘ah thanks’. I remember him saying ‘is that it? We’re saying you’re part of the senior team’, and I realised he was talking about the Red Roses. I was absolutely gobsmacked.
“He also said that ‘we know you play full back, and that’s where we see you playing’, but at that stage I hadn’t really even played there, so I knew I had to do some learning.”
At 18 years old, and with only a handful of senior matches under her belt, Ellie scored a try on her England debut when she came off the bench against Canada in the autumn of 2017. In the final minutes of the match, Zoe Harrison flung the ball wide to Jess Breach, who cut through a tiring Canadian defence before offloading into the path of Kildunne for the easiest of finishes.
Those try-scoring exploits would continue, as Kildunne racked up nine tries in eight appearances for the Red Roses, but her introduction to Test rugby wasn’t all plain sailing.
“I made quite a few mistakes early on. The first time I touched the ball I just remember catching it and thinking ‘full backs kick it back, full backs kick it back’, so I booted it and it went straight off the pitch.
“Another time Canada kicked it, it bounced and came over the try line, I picked it up and I could hear Danielle Waterman shouting ‘don’t put it down’, but I touched it down and Canada scored from the resulting scrum.
“I came on in our next game during the Autumn Internationals and within five minutes I got a yellow card, and just stayed on the pitch looking at the referee like ‘what now?’ and he was like ‘get off the pitch’. I’d never been carded before, and thought it was like football – two yellow cards is a red and off.”
A brief spell in sevens saw Ellie help Team GB secure Olympic qualification thanks to an England win at the Kazan 7s, though she did not take part in Tokyo. Her return to the 15-a-side format brought new challenges; she signed for Wasps in September 2020, and this season has made the move to Premier 15s champions Harlequins.
Ellie has never shied away from making tough decisions, which is why she has experienced so much in her rugby career to date, and it’s a quality she attributes to the Roald Dahl quote ‘Lukewarm is no good’.
“I found the quote years ago and my mum printed it off in my bedroom, so I saw it a lot,” Ellie explains. “It means if you don’t go at something 100% you’re not going to get everything you want from it, and that is for everything in life. In rugby, it could be as simple as a tackle or a run.
“Everyone can do something at lukewarm; if you put your hand under lukewarm water you can keep it there for ages, but if it’s boiling and you put your hand in, it comes straight back out – you react. That’s my meaning of it anyway, and it has helped mould my decisions and things I do in life.”
Ellie Kildunne always wanted to surprise and amaze people with her elusive running, and from tag in Yorkshire to Tests at Twickenham, she has and continues to do so.
“I’ve always liked the catch me if you can thing, I’m really impressed by that,” she explains. “If you can move a certain way it is almost like a dance, and it leaves people for dead even when they are so close.
“One day I want to search ‘greatest steppers’ videos on YouTube, and among the men, see myself in there too.”
