Ellie Kildunne does not really need to do any talking. Her highlights reel does it for her. You do not need to know anything much about her, or her sport, just see her 60m sprint, stutter, and step against the US, her 40m kick return, with its dummy and hand-off, against Italy, or her 10-minute hat-trick against Sale, and you will understand exactly why she has won World Rugby’s Women’s XVs Player of the Year award. With her speed, style, spontaneity and sense of adventure, Kildunne excels at the parts of the game that make plenty of us first fall in love with it.
But Kildunne does talk, and talk well. Her eye for a break, she says, is just a straightforward case of fight or flight. “And I’m definitely in flight most of the time.” She has an infectious enthusiasm, summed up by her love of an old Roald Dahl quote from My Uncle Oswald that she used to have up on her wall, and part of which sits in the bio of her Instagram page. “If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” It comes up in just about every interview she gives.
Including ours, on Tuesday afternoon, while Kildunne was getting ready to go to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards that evening. Her characteristic mess of curly hair is swept back. Kildunne went to Spoty last year too, but could not stay for the after-party because her mum had come to pick her up. It meant she hardly got a chance to mingle. “I briefly met a few of the Lionesses, which was very cool,” she says. “I’m very grateful to be invited back.” The way she talks about it all makes her sound endearingly unaware that she belongs in their company.
But then women’s rugby is growing so fast that the players still seem to be catching up to its popularity. Kildunne is only 25, but when she started playing she was the only girl on an all-boys team. The women’s Premiership was launched in the same year she made her England debut. Worldwide, women’s rugby is one area of the sport that’s still growing at speed. Kildunne has just signed a new contract with Harlequins, and, on 28 December, she will play for them in front of a 75,000 (and counting) crowd at Twickenham, part of the double header with the men’s team.
Kildunne wanted to be a footballer herself once, or a track athlete. But these days she would not swap rugby for anything. “There’s something about rugby that’s so infectious, being part of a team with your best mates. You do go through the hard times, you can see the people next to you really struggling on the pitch, when they are covered in mud, or they’re limping out of a tackle and it just makes you want to work harder for them, you know? I’m absolutely obsessed with it. I love the game, and I love where it’s going. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
The game is only going to get bigger. Next year England, who have won 50 out of their past 51 games, host the World Cup. The organisers have already sold the best part of a quarter of a million tickets. “We’re really starting to see the ripple effect of the growth of women’s sport,” says Kildunne. “We’re breaking records every time we seem to play, so I do feel like I’m playing in the golden era of sport.” She is sure England Women will sell out Twickenham soon. “Everyone’s talking about the World Cup final but we’ve got a Six Nations game against France at Twickenham in April and I think that’s the moment that we will do it.
“It’s been incredible to see all the growth that’s happened since the last World Cup, it still takes our breath away to know so many people want to come watch us even though we didn’t win.” Ah yes. The one loss. A 34-31 defeat by New Zealand in the final, in Auckland two years ago. England were on a 30-match winning streak heading into that one. “To this day probably one of the best games of rugby I’ve ever played in my life,” she says, “and in all honesty, as disappointing as it was, the loss was one of the best things that has happened to me as a rugby player. It fuelled a fire that made me want to become the best player I can be.”
They are approaching the tournament the long way round this time, under the watchful eye of their new coach, John Mitchell. “There’s a lot to come before that moment,” she says. “We talk about the final being the pinnacle of our Mount Everest, and when on a climb like that you’ve got to stop at all the base camps along the way.” Whether or not they make it all the way to summit this time, it’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to draw more attention to the sport, so that this time next year it will, perhaps, be someone else talking about meeting Kildunne or another of the Red Roses at the Spoty Awards.
“The women’s game, especially, has got the opportunity to write its own fairytale,” Kildunne says, “If I’m honest I would like it to grow beyond my imagination. I don’t want to sit here and tell you ‘yeah this is what I want the future to be like,’ because I want it to exceed what anyone could imagine, I want it to go way beyond to a place that women’s rugby hasn’t been to before.” There’s an opening there, and an opportunity beyond it. Kildunne will be first through, just like always.
