Gill Burns retires on a high
Gill Burns has just retired from playing rugby 36 years after her England debut and 30 since winning the Rugby World Cup.
Having played 73 times for England, captained her country and scored 34 tries, she finally hung up her boots after playing in the Wooden Spoon Vets Fest tournament at Old Reigatian RFC.
Vets Fest raises funds for children and young people with disabilities or facing disadvantage, with players from the age of 35 upwards taking part in teams from across the UK and Ireland. They are looking both to win and to raise as much as possible.
Gill was captaining the Merseyside and North team and achieved success in her last tournament.
Silverware icing on the cake
Said Gill: “With a skeleton squad, we won the Plate Competition and also won the fundraising trophy, having raised over £5,000 for the cause. To win some silverware really was the icing on the cake after my final rugby tournament. I really enjoyed playing alongside some of my oldest and dearest rugby friends, like Janette Evans (nee Shaw) 2014 winning England World Cup Team Manager and new friends who I met for the first time.
“It was an honour to represent the North one last time. Another cherished rugby memory to add to so many more,”
As a long-standing Wooden Spoon ambassador and member of their Merseyside Regional Committee the charity marked her retirement with a presentation.
“I have said that this is the last time I’ll play rugby as my body is getting a little fragile,” said Gill. “And it will be, although if they start an Over 50s Super Vets, well maybe…”
Now aged 60, Gill was 24 when she made her England debut at her Waterloo club, having organised the Test against Sweden herself in the days when the club players’ bar specified no dogs and no women. England won 42-0.
Her mother Ann was a dance teacher and Gill danced, competed at shotput, discuss and sprint, as well as playing basketball, tennis, swimming and hockey. It was when she floored an opposition hockey player that she was asked to join her in the Liverpool Polytechnic rugby team.
They played out of Waterloo and Gill turned up for training. It was two weeks to her first match as No 8, and two games later she was at the North trials.
“The next thing I know, after five games of rugby, I was in the England squad. The token northerner!”
Gill was then asked to start a Waterloo women’s team and appointed herself the north-west development officer. “We’d organise great training weekends with 50 to 60 girls and people like Mike Slemen coaching.”
Players funded themselves
For her first Great Britain game “we stayed in a youth hostel and I was cleaning dishes not toilets, like some of them had to before playing an international.”
Part of the England 1994 Women’s Rugby World Cup winning squad, she took unpaid leave as a teacher at Culcheth High School in Cheshire to travel to the tournament, and spent more than £800 for her Edinburgh hotel.
This was a time when England women bought their own shirts, paid for their own accommodation and travel.
“We paid for everything but it was worth every penny’, Gill adds. ‘I just feel for those who simply couldn’t afford the privilege.”
Gill is synonymous with women’s rugby and with the Waterloo club where she’s played, coached, been Chair and President. She’s an active Past President and alongside her 87-year-old Mum, who is an honorary vice president of the club, they run Waterloo’s 200 Club, raising funds for teams. She remains a proud Past President of Lancashire Rugby, and Vice President of the Anti-Assassins.
At her club, these days she can drink in the bar where there’s now an international board for women, starting with her name. At Allianz Stadium, she is also Number 23 on the England Women’s honours board in the home changing room.
Gill has also left her mark on the current Red Roses side, having coached the likes of Holly Aitchison and Sarah Beckett in their school team.
For a decade she was President of what was then the Rugby Football Union for Women, working alongside the RFU, until the RFUW became part of the RFU in 2012.
Among her many highlights is her MBE for services to rugby and especially, in 1994, winning the world cup final against the USA 38-23. “It was a dream you never thought you’d get the chance to achieve.”
Gill captained England from the 1994 Rugby World Cup until the 1998 campaign, resigning her role on principle when coaches Eric Field and Steve Peters were sacked during the after-dinner speeches, having just beaten France and won the first 5 Nations Championship. She stayed part of the squad.
“I loved playing for England so much that I would do anything to wear the rose. I was on 49 caps, and I was determined to get to 50 because I would be the first person in the world to get there.”
At 37 she trained every day, rest days included. “I was as fit as I could ever be, conscious that people would say I was too old. I peaked for the 2002 world cup and the Canada semi-final was probably one of the best games I’d ever played. I was making a point for 90 minutes in 90 degree heat.
“I played my heart out and thought, ‘you can’t not pick me for the final now’, but I was on the bench and only got seven minutes.
"Twenty minutes to go, and the crowd were shouting ‘Burnsy, Burnsy' and they didn’t send me on. I was sitting next to Helen Clayton, the best openside by a mile, she was equally frustrated, she should have been on the pitch.
“We both got seven minutes. We did our best for the seven minutes, but it was too late. That would have been a wonderful highlight to finish the international career on, winning that final.
Gill wouldn’t change a thing
“That was the dream but it was just what happened. I did have a world record number of international caps at the time though, so I was in a very proud position to finish my international career with that accolade.
“I sometimes wonder what sort of athletes we could have become, what sort of team we could have gone on to be, if we’d had the support that players get now.
“I wouldn’t change anything though, the youth hostels, staying in a b&b in Wales, three of us sharing a twin room in the roof space where the roof was leaking. I wouldn’t change any of that, because we just had a great time.”
As recently as January last season, knowing Waterloo had no reserves, she travelled to an away game in Scotland for a Wooden Spoon game with her boots and kit. “I never told mum that I’d be playing full contact though, as I’m always complaining about my bad back” she says, “but I was ready to play and scored a try.”
Donations for the Vets Fest fundraiser: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/vetsfest2024
