“I was teaching at school on Wednesday and then flying to a World Cup on Thursday. It’s definitely a bit surreal, but it’s a very fortunate position and I’m going to take any opportunity I get.”
Lotte Clapp has seen a few things in her time. An international winger, she has won 10 England caps and captained Saracens to three domestic titles. But life can still take unexpected turns.
Clapp stepped back from Test rugby in order to train as a teacher. Now 27, she teaches year three at Heath Mount School in Hertford. But under the new World Rugby union transfer regulation, players can switch countries after a stand-down period.
Clapp’s mother was born in Mississippi so Clapp is now an Eagle, working with the American squad ahead of their World Cup kick-off against Italy in Whangarei on Saturday evening (US time).
Clapp feels “very, very fortunate” to be able to teach and play elite international sport.
“The school have given me this time off to come and play in the World Cup. They’re brilliant. All the children are getting so excited and the school will be making sure they know how we’re doing. I think I’m gonna have a few FaceTimes with them. I know I’m extremely lucky to be in this position and to still have a job to go back to when this is all over.”
When the World Cup will be all over for the Eagles is an open question. The Americans won the first women’s World Cup in 1991 and have generally been there or thereabouts ever since, finishing fourth in Ireland last time.
But England, with a world record 25 wins in a row, and the hosts, New Zealand, are favourites to meet in the final at Eden Park in Auckland on 12 November. Both have put 50 on the Eagles this year.
Neither Clapp nor Alev Kelter, her Saracens team-mate who joins our Zoom call from the British Consulate in New York (thanks to Rugby Heroes) to the team base in New Zealand, will be drawn into any predictions at all, rash or otherwise, particularly for the opener against Italy, who beat France in a warm-up game.
Kelter, a sevens Olympian who plays wing or centre in 15s, is more eager to salute funding which has enabled the Americans “to be together for weeks at a time … to get together and work on that team cohesion”. She also says it feels like the Eagles have had a “a fresh start” after the disruption of the pandemic.
“This team is so different than what we had a couple of years ago,” she says. “And even though we had Covid I think everyone has come back stronger and more united. After Covid, we’ve had so much time to think about the macro picture, like what we want to do, that now it’s about refining the micro pictures with the people around us.”
The Eagles’ last two warm-ups produced that defeat by England but also a win over Scotland, 21-17.
“I really enjoyed the Scotland game,” Clapp says. “It was exactly what we needed after a hard pre-season … You can train as much as you can and play in-house games, but it’s not the same. We got a lot from the Scotland game, a lot of confidence from it. Obviously, the England game, the score didn’t go the way we wanted it to. But we got a few small wins out of it and a lot of learning, which is the most important thing.”
At the World Cup, the Italy game will be followed by Japan – in Whangarei again, on 15 October – and then Canada, a crunch match likely to decide knockout qualification, in Auckland one week later.
“We’ve got a couple of Canadians for Saracens,” Clapp says, referring to the prop Alex Ellis and Alysha Corrigan, a wing, “and there are a few more dotted across the league.”
The Allianz Premier 15s, as Clapp says, has become “the place to go” for women’s rugby, at least in the northern hemisphere. The Canadian World Cup squad contains eight players who play in England. The US squad has 19, led by the captain, Kate Zackary, who plays in the back row for Exeter.
Clapp says: “The English league is thriving. It’s a great standard of rugby, quality games week in, week out. It’s pushing women’s rugby and making it a lot better.”
Sally Horrox, director of women’s rugby for World Rugby, wants the World Cup in New Zealand to be the “start of the next stage of the growth and transformation of the game”. But some things remain pleasingly old-fashioned. Kelter and Clapp speak warmly of their welcome in New Zealand, where rugby runs in the veins.
“It’s been brilliant,” Clapp says. “We had our welcome ceremony, where there were performances from the New Zealanders which took your breath away. Four school girls had everybody in tears by the end, with the poem they had written for us.
“They’ve got big buses for all of us, with the World Cup logos all over, so you’ve got people on the sides of the road waving as you’re driving through. It’s brilliant. Everybody’s excited. Everybody’s ready, and everybody’s going to get behind women’s rugby, which is a really exciting place to be.”
Experience of such fervour perhaps prompts Kelter to point out that though England may be most people’s favourites, no one should count out New Zealand, who are “on home soil, in this culture, playing for friends and family.
“But everyone is thinking and wanting and working as hard as they can to be on that podium and in the gold-medal game. I think it’s 30,000 tickets that have been sold for the first games, at Eden Park on Saturday. It’s just gonna go up from there. This World Cup is truly paving the way for women’s sports.”
