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Earning the right to win each game may be the Red Roses’ mantra at this Rugby World Cup but making history on home soil is the goal Sarah Hunter and Lou Meadows are working to orchestrate. England’s assistant coaches describe themselves as complementary, bringing diverse experience that creates a “good blend” alongside the forwards coach, Louis Deacon, and the head coach, John Mitchell, with the Red Roses unbeaten under the New Zealander’s tenure.
In a hotel meeting room on the outskirts of Bristol as England enter the business end of the tournament, Hunter and Meadows explain how the coaching setup offers “different lenses” for tactics and planning. The duo have brought a sharp, strategic edge to the hosts’ defence and attack and for 40 minutes they range over a series of topics, including picking in which game this England side have come closest to perfection.
They think for a moment and then choose the same one – the away win against New Zealand at WXV 1 in 2023. It was the first time England had played the Black Ferns since they lost the World Cup final the previous year – which remains the last time the Red Roses were defeated. Meadows and Hunter say that 2023 rematch was the one when “everything clicked”.
“The players parked all of the emotion and really focused in on the rugby,” Hunter says. “That was the third game we had played together as a squad and the whole tournament was a marker of where we wanted to go.
“That performance put a stamp for us as a group of what we could do with this team and what we could be capable of,” Meadows says. “I think that was the really exciting bit for all of us as well as the team.”
That game was one staging post of a three-year journey to avenge the 2022 loss in Auckland which they hope will culminate at a sold-out Twickenham if England claim the trophy. They have three games to win to make that happen, first against Scotland on Sunday. England are approaching that game with respect and are not taking anything for granted but when asked what it would mean to win the World Cup, it is clear it would be everything.
“I would just be immensely proud to have been a really small part in this incredible group of players,” Hunter, the England captain in 2022, says. “Looking at how they have grown as players, how they have grown as a group: their togetherness is unbelievably strong; how they have formed connections, bonds, moments, memories; regardless of what will happen in the next few weeks they will look back on and hopefully can be proud of what they have done. Not just for this group and how they have created memories but how they have changed the game.”
Meadows adds: “They always say success naturally will create a bigger bang than not [having] success. I want to see that bang in full swing. I want to see it explode, I want to see the ripple and the continuous effect it has. I want it for the girls, I want it for us but I really want it for the sport in England.”
Part of that ripple may see an increase in the amount of female coaches in the sport. At the World Cup, only 32% are female. Hunter hopes this tournament can inspire more girls and women to take up different opportunities. “Over seven million watched the pool stages and if they are turning on and young girls see females in the coaching box that is a really positive thing.
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“We all know that in sport there are so many different roles for people to be involved in, it doesn’t have to be on the pitch. Coaches, medics, team managers, that is the really good thing about visibility. You can see all the different options that young girls can look up to and go: ‘That’s what I want to do’. We have got to keep sending that message of we are here, present and we want to inspire people into these roles as well as playing.”
Not only are Meadows and Hunter inspiring the next generation of coaches but they are also paving the way in the sport as working mothers. Meadows has two children, while Hunter gave birth to her daughter last October. The pair are constantly asked about motherhood in relation to their jobs and an interesting answer is raised when asked if that ever becomes frustrating as their male counterparts are not asked about fatherhood.
Meadows says: “It would be interesting if they find it annoying that they are not asked. I think it’s easier being the mum to get asked as part of that about your role, having to do both. But equally Deacs has had to juggle being a parent and a coach and he has three daughters so it’s not easy. Nathan Catt [scrum coach] has just had a third child so he is juggling that balance as well, so it’d be really interesting if they find it frustrating that they don’t get asked as it is equally part of their job as well as it is ours. That is what Sarah and I are trying to do with the fact we are mums in the group … trying to normalise parents within the camp, in the environment, in professional sport in the top end.”
For now, the focus is not on finals, trophies or what might come next. Just the next game, the next detail, the next opportunity to earn the right again. That’s the rhythm Hunter and Meadows have helped set, not just in how England play, but in how they think. Quietly, deliberately and with clarity, they are building something. If it ends in history, it will not be by accident.
