First & Last: Carol Isherwood
Maybe, as the eldest of five sisters, Carol Isherwood was always destined to lead.
As a keen sportswoman, once she discovered rugby that leadership included captaining both Great Britain and England and helping to establish the Rugby Football Union for Women.
Born in Leigh, Carol enjoyed hockey and judo before she started playing rugby aged 20, setting up her own side at Leeds University later the same year. With speed and strength in abundance, she began at prop. With an outstanding ability to read the game, she covered most positions on the pitch during her playing career, her carrying and tackling skills to the fore as a flanker.
She was the obvious choice for captain when Great Britain played their first international match on home soil in 1986. The following year, she was asked to captain the Red Roses in their first ever fixture, against Wales in Pontypool.
She was encouraged by her father, a rugby league man, who was there cheering her on when Great Britain took on France, the game ending 14-8 to the visitors at a time when unconverted tries were worth four points.
We got a lot of flak
“I used to go and watch rugby with my dad, and he loved seeing me play, glad that someone in the family had taken up the game,” says Carol. “My sisters were supportive but in those days as women rugby players we got a lot of flak. Then when the critical men actually watched us play, they often changed their minds. That was something that motivated us to play the best rugby we could.”
Carol not only captained the GB team but sorted out arrangements, organising coaches, the ground, the media. When someone went to welcome the French party at Heathrow, and they were actually flying into Gatwick, she left the team run to sort it out and get the visiting team to their accommodation.
With the unique distinction of captaining both GB and England in their inaugural matches, in the days when there might be one international a year Carol earned a combined total of 15 caps, playing eight times for Great Britain and seven times for England, including in the first World Cup final of 1991. International Rugby Board (now World Rugby) Women’s Personality of the Year in 1988, she retired in 1992 due to a serious knee injury, focusing on coaching and driving the growth and development of the women’s game.
Only reward the joy of the game
In those early days of women’s rugby, nobody took anything for granted and the only reward was the joy of the game itself.
Said Carol: “I remember when I left university, we got invited on the UCL tour and I borrowed the money to go because I thought I’d never get the chance of another rugby tour! We just wanted to play, wanted to give others the chance to play. Part of that was becoming a successful England side.”
She was instrumental in founding the Women’s Rugby Football Union before becoming its first Secretary, Performance Director and Director of Rugby. Her services to rugby earned her an OBE in 2003 and she was the first woman on the IRB Committee.
Her coaching career included stints at Leeds, Richmond and Henley and as head coach of Emerging England, England U19s. Assisting at the 1994 Women’s Rugby World Cup, she introduced the squad to a game she called ‘Killing as an Organised Sport’ (KAOS), with players sending each other inventive death threats as a means of distraction.
“I remember Gill Burns finding a false plait across her dinner plate, which she was horrified at and which everyone else found hysterically funny,” says Carol.
England went on to become world champions for the first time.
Says another former England captain and now RFU Chief Financial Officer, Sue Day: “Carol did as much as anyone to take women’s rugby and its professionalisation to where it is today. She is a brilliant woman who has made a huge difference to the sport.”
First: 5 April 1987 Pontypool Park, Wales 4 – 22 England
“We didn’t have a team bus, so everyone drove or got lifts off team mates to the youth hostel we were staying at in Chepstow. I decided that the forwards should wash up after dinner and the backs after breakfast. It’s not true that the players had to clean the lavatories. Although some of the squad love telling that story, it’s stretching it a bit!
“I remember they played a recording of the national anthem before the game, and we all did our best to make ourselves heard. Bird (Liza Burgess) who was a good friend and who I’d played alongside for Great Britain, was the Wales captain. Some of the players ended up sleeping on her parents’ living room floor!
“Nicky Ponsford was hooking, I was playing 7. Karen Almond, who a few years later took over from me as England captain, scored a try, Pippa Atkinson got a hat-trick and I went over for the fifth and last try of the match.
“It was an amazing feeling, a tremendous honour to be playing for and captaining my country.
“We were tremendously fortunate to have Jim Greenwood as our coach. He was a top coach and was Director of PE at Loughborough. He wrote brilliant books about coaching and playing and was a world leader. To have him coach us for two or three years was amazing. Jim advocated total rugby, which was how we wanted to play. I think he enjoyed that
“I think there were about seven Loughborough students on international duty at Pontypool Park. We had a crowd, beyond our mums and dads, and the media were there. On the interview I said: ‘Me and Bird (Liza Burgess) are going to go and have a couple of pints now!’ I’m pretty sure we did.”
Last: 1988 Newport, 1988 - England 36 - 6 Wales
“My first and last England captaincies were both away against Wales. We went back to the same Chepstow youth hostel – it was obviously such a success last time! It was players doing the washing up again.
“This time we played at Newport’s Rodney Parade, where the fans were used to watching world-class players on the pitch. The negativity of some people about women playing rugby wasn’t something that bothered us. We just wanted to play. And to play for England together was as good as it got.
“We had a crowd of almost a thousand at Newport and one newspaper report after the match read: ‘many overcoming a natural prejudice and conceding that the girls could play a bit.’
At the time there were about 80 women’s clubs in England and Wales combined, so it was great promotion and to get in the press was a bonus.
I lined up against Liza Burgess as Wales captain again. She had lots of support as a local Newport girl. Emma Mitchell at 9 and Karen Almond at 10 had a good game and Cheryl Stennett, our right wing, scored a hat-trick.
“I think Jim (Greenwood) would have been delighted to see the media admit that we could play. I remember one of our coaches saying women are like sponges and men like stones because of the way women soak up coaching but men can be set in their ways.
“We wanted to play rugby, to take it further, get more women involved and we were doing that, without really knowing how. We had to do everything for ourselves, organise and play, but we didn’t mind, we were loving it.
“Now I’m a consultant with World Rugby working with female coaches around the world on their development and building leadership, I recognise a problem across all sports where there are not enough career opportunities for women coaches. In all sports in the Olympics it was around 11%.
“We are missing 50% of the coaching talent pool. With World Rugby, we are working to normalise women in coaching, which means taking on the conditioning that we all have. If we are serious about diversity, we need to see more women on management teams, more women leading teams in professional sport. The talent is there, the enthusiasm, what we now need to see is real progress.”
