No Woman No Try

this is not just about the sport.

It's about women and it's about women's sport,

and it's about putting us on a platform,

and knowing that we can do it.

I challenge anyone to say that women's rugby is not good enough

and women are not enough, 'cause we are.

I'm still surprised, in 2021 that people...

are surprised that women even play rugby.

I think women's rugby is so far behind men's.

If you think about the time at which more formal rugby started,

women really there were considered so frail and weak.

People used to come and watch a game

because they wanted a laugh at women rolling around in the mud.

So many people, men and women

believe women shouldn't be playing sport, shouldn't be playing rugby.

Young girls growing up, if they don't see female athletes

being celebrated in the way male athletes are,

what is it going to say to them?

Despite a healthy press interest back at Twickenham today,

there are no plans for the women's game to go professional.

Apparently, we're second-class citizens, that's how we're supposed to be treated.

It's tough for female athletes.

They just wanna play a sport they love.

No matter what level it is, you tend to find that

they'll face a lot of abuse for it, whether it's at grass roots

or international level, in person or online.

I actually push back really hard against this idea of,

"Don't worry, it'll make you stronger,"

'cause it doesn't, it stays with you forever.

So my career path, in brief,

is pretty much started playing rugby at Medway Rugby Club in 2015.

Had my first game in December 2015,

and was playing for England by November 2017,

less than two years later.

I'm Shaunagh Brown,

and I currently play rugby for Harlequins in England

as a tighthead prop.

Before rugby, I was very much into my athletics.

It was shot-put and discus and, eventually, hammer throw as well.

And then my ultimate in the career was

competing for England at the Commonwealth Games in 2014,

throwing a hammer, made it to the final.

That was what I had done before rugby.

But even within that I would do anything that came up

in terms of opportunity to try different sports.

I tried Highland games, Strong Woman competitions, boxing,

anything that was offered to me, I would try and say yes to,

and I think that's part of why I've been so successful so quickly in rugby.

It's just because of my sporting background,

like, in having a great foundation to go and do any sport.

From the Commonwealth Games,

I kind of was on a bit of a low with it all

and started falling out of love with the sport,

and instead of just carrying on and being unhappy

or just stopping altogether,

I thought I'll look for a new challenge.

And literally, just looked up my local rugby club.

Emailed them, said, "Can I come and play?"

And they went, "Yeah, of course, you can.

We train once a week, on a Tuesday.

You're welcome to come down."

And so I did, with my mum, my superfan.

I'm 25 years old and my mum's introducing me, like,

"This is Shaunagh.

She's never played before, can she play?"

"Mum, I'm 25, I can do it myself."

But she was very much present for my first session.

And even now, Mum is my superwoman, superfan.

I suppose, looking back, she has always been the person that she is.

When she was younger, she always had male boyfriends.

Not boyfriends but male friends.

All her friends were always boys.

And she played football,

she hung upside down on the monkeybars,

and would say, "Don't make me wear a dress

'cause I don't want to show my knickers off," stuff like that.

Growing up, would you agree that I was a tomboy?

Definitely.

And what about...

like, transgender? Did you ever think that I wanted to be a boy?

-No. -No.

I used to get that constantly, the question.

Not even a question, they'd say, "Oh, you wanna be a boy."

'Cause of how I used to do my hair.

Do you remember, how I used to do my hair?

It was always like, "Are you a boy or a girl?" "I'm a girl."

I had that when I was younger, I was a tomboy.

Not as much as you,

'cause I grew out of mine.

I had my hair cut short, shaved and everything.

People used to think I was a boy.

I remember sitting on the bus once

and a group of people thought I was a boy.

I think there are probably a lot of women in the world

that are naturally not afraid of physicality,

not afraid of contact and not afraid of being strong.

There are very few places that...

women with that mentality get to exist, but also excel,

and I think that's why rugby resonated so deeply with me.

I'm Stef Evans, I play for Bristol Bears women

and I founded Ruggette RFC.

It's exciting.

I started playing when I was in high school.

I tried other sports, I really wanted to be good at a sport,

and I just couldn't find one that I felt good at.

There's also not a lot of contact sports available for girls

or physical sports available for girls in school.

When a friend of mine asked me to come try out for rugby in grade ten,

I've never seen a rugby game before in my entire life.

I didn't even know what the ball looked like.

I went to my first practise,

there was an introductory element of contact to it,

which really blew my mind.

I had no idea what the rules were, still I was like, "Done, I'm in."

I was like, all right I'm gonna put the next little while

I'm gonna put everything and to see how far I can take this.

And I'm gonna go until the point where somebody says, you know...

You wanna leave the jersey and the game as a whole better than you found it

and nobody is doing it without a huge level of love

and determination and passion.

I think, maybe we wouldn't love it as much if the game wasn't as...

as empowering or as freeing, as it is for a lot of us.

There's not that many opportunities for the type of female

that excels in rugby to excel elsewhere in the same way.

You, know, we need the sport just as much as the sport needs us.

For me, playing rugby for Harlequins is all I know.

I had... my first club was Medway Rugby Club,

which I was at for half a season and ever since then

I've only ever known the Harlequins' way of playing rugby.

My whole rugby life is Harlequins.

So for me, it is very special, it is a special club to me.

I still hope to grow the relationship as we continue in the future as well.

There are so many people that...

didn't realise that women aren't professional.

So when I tell people, in 2021,

I'm a professional rugby player and they go like, "That's cool."

As if it's completely normal and then I sort of emphasise

there's only 28 of us English professional women rugby players in the country.

They're like, "Wow, I thought everyone was professional."

Especially, when you play Premiership Rugby,

with Harlequins amongst the top ten clubs in the country,

they just assume everyone's professional, when actually so much of our team...

go to work.

The vast majority of the people that play

in my league don't have agents,

we don't get paid.

Some get something,

some get expenses, some get nothing, a lot get nothing.

We don't have somebody advocating for our...

on behalf of us.

To play the Premiership, you have to obviously give up a lot of things,

or manage a lot of things.

Most of the difficulty lies in scheduling,

because you have a huge workload

associated with training, with fitness

that has to be worked around or fit in

with the things you have to do for your career.

Whether it's nine to fives,

or whether they're teachers, or soldiers, paramedics.

We have doctors, we have dentists within our team

and still expecting to play a professional level of rugby

whilst not being professional rugby players.

You also have to block out time for recovery,

which is usually the first thing that you want to cut into

when you are trying to fit in a lot of other things,

usually to do with your day job.

It's really important in order to keep yourself at a good enough standard

that you can perform in a way you want to perform.

A lot of people that aren't intimately

acquainted with what it's like to do it

don't understand the level of commitment required.

It can be physically demanding,

and it can be mentally and emotionally demanding.

For me, the hardest part is that validation process.

That's the part that I feel the most taxed by.

You spend a lot of time having these little micro conversations

justifying and explaining what you do and why it takes so much time.

That can be emotionally very draining.

It is an honour to be a professional

female in sport because, growing up,

sport has been and is my whole life.

It's something I always wanted to do.

So it's an honour now that I am a full-time professional athlete

and it makes me proud to say out loud.

It does come with its pressures and you are...

rightly so, expected to know a lot more about rugby and the game and the team.

To work harder in the gym and put more time in

and sort of be that, even within our team be that senior player, be that role model.

To enable other people to come in and want to follow in your footsteps.

When I was a kid and I was growing up,

it wasn't a very body-positive place.

Especially, for somebody who didn't look like...

what most people thought a woman should look like or a girl should look like.

I've always been a large person, I've always been big,

and as a kid, I got bullied really bad for it all throughout elementary school

and into high school as well.

Being physical in sports in school didn't really help that whole dynamic.

It seems to give the people who are already

looking for ways to attack me, it seem to give them more ammunition.

Starting about six or seven,