Eating Cake
Sara Orchard of the BBC has interviewed Ellie Kildunne about her immediate prospects (www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/c703rpp09lro).
It turns on some of the central questions facing everyone in the game, from the individual player to World Rugby itself: the old chestnut: Fifteens or Sevens, or both?
Kildunne has rejoined the Red Roses squad as it prepares for two September internationals and the home World Cup.
Despite the quality of competition coming for the No 15 shirt (McKenna, Rowland, Sing), it’s unlikely John Mitchell and his assistants would exclude Kildunne in favour of another player, unless special circumstances enabled it. She was named Player of the Match three times out of five in the last Six Nations series. Her collaboration with her two wings makes them the most dangerous back-three in world rugby at present.
Either or both?
Then we come to the tricky bit.
She says she doesn’t want to be someone who’s in and out, that is, opting for Fifteens and Sevens by turns, according to which big tournament looms next.
But that is precisely what she is doing. She confirms this by offering the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics as a possible future target.
In my youth that was called “Having your cake and eating it”.
Alex Matthews makes for an interesting parallel. Another widely gifted player, she was the babe of the England team that won the World Cup iin 2014, but was good enough to represent the nation at Sevens many times. When she was invited to rejoin the 7s squad after a break, she said yes, then wondered why on earth she had made such a mad decision. That lies all in the past, but significantly, she did not offer her services to the GB squad that finished seventh at the Paris Olympics.
I have attempted to shake the crystal ball and see what lies in store for a future GB 7s squad. We’re unlikely to learn what expectations the staff and players really harboured as they stepped out to play the leading 7s nations in the world at the Stade de France.
But it will surely need an internal revolution to improve the results obtained thus far. We can’t even be sure a team built on similar lines to the present one would qualify for the next Olympiad.
If the GB set-up gets a thorough overhaul, then we could imagine any number of Red Roses debating whether to join the party, as they did for Rio in 2016. Just reel off the names of some current backs – Aitchison, Breach, Buchanan, Dow, Heard, Jones, Macdonald, McGillivray, Rowland and Wyrwas (not to mention forwards of the Matthews stamp) – and GB might get closer to a medal than it has managed in the last three attempts.
Then think of the effect on the Red Roses, 15s version. Would they continue their merry way, if such players were jetting off to the next SVNS series?
Influencers
Mention of the French national stadium brings us to the next sub-topic: the influence players can have on the spread of a game. Kildunne quotes Ilona Maher (USA) and Antoine Dupont (France) as examples of arch influencers. The pair could hardly be more different in their rugby-playing backgrounds.
Dupont may well have wished to gain a gold medal at a home Olympics – who wouldn’t? But he was answering the FFR’s urgent plea to switch from 15s, where he was very much the Golden Boy, across to the shorter code. This he achieved magnificently. Not only did his performances help gain France a gold medal, but it gave a positive slant to Paris’ decision to spend billions as hosts to the venture.
Maher on the other hand is a global figure in 21st century terms, an Instagram favourite. Her rugby background is almost exclusively in 7s, though she gained a first 15s cap for the Eagles in 2021, then one more. Helping the USA to win a bronze medal was an important step in raising rugby’s profile in a nation that has its own choice selection of favourite sports.
Kildunne is fast becoming an influencer in her own right. She has even been given a larger-than- life portrait on the side of a house, complete with a garland of red roses. I don’t think it’s a Banksy.
It is an irony that the BBC’s chosen headline is “Kildunne commits to England for 2025 World Cup bid”. That is far from committing to the long-term welfare of the 15s’ squad. With Meg Jones now sidelined with an ankle injury, she becomes the only squad member to have been at the Olympics and the only one who has indicated a wish to leave the group a second time.
