There will be more attention on Villa Park where England play Andorra and more celebrities at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, but it’s long odds you’ll find a better party in any corner of world sport than the one being thrown in Brighton this weekend. That’s not because of the fanzones, free concerts, and fireworks, but who’s coming. These dates have been ringed ever since the fixture list was released. Everyone who’s anyone in a sport where everyone is someone seems to be planning to make a big weekend of it. England play Australia on Saturday, New Zealand play Ireland on Sunday. Both matches are sold out.
“An international at Twickenham is more than a mere spectacle,” Alec Waugh once wrote, “it is a gathering of the clan.” It’s true in Brighton, too, although it will be a very different sort of crowd from the one who used to fill the West Stand in Waugh’s day.
Last time the Rugby World Cup went to the city they made a movie about how it all worked out. Karne Hesketh scored in the corner in the final minute, Japan beat South Africa 34-32, and before you knew it the team were up on the big screen in a film called The Brighton Miracle. In a particularly inspired bit of casting, the head coach, Eddie Jones, was played by Temuera Morrison, best known for portraying a cold-blooded bounty hunter in the Star Wars movies. This time, the movie has come before the match. World Rugby is releasing a short film called Where We Belong, directed by the duo Pip + Lib, emphasising rugby’s inclusivity. It is being launched this weekend.
“Obviously we’ve seen that players in this tournament have been able to bring across their personalities, because they have that freedom of expression,” says the tournament director, Sarah Massey. “But right from the very beginning we wanted to achieve something a bit deeper, we wanted to make sure we could use this tournament as a platform for all the people, especially women and other under-represented groups, who hadn’t typically seen themselves reflected in the industry.”
The executive team is all-female. So are the artists who created the opening TV credits, the DJs, and the groundstaff at the final.
It sounds like the sort of talk every sports executive loves to use. The difference is that it’s actually an authentic reflection of the way women’s rugby is. Where We Belong shows a slice of life in three women’s teams and the trailer alone is enough to show that the film-makers caught something about the sport. Pip + Lib have worked with the Lionesses before, but this was their first experience in women’s rugby. “I went into it thinking that there would be a real type that’s interested in rugby,” says Lib. “My perception of it was that it was all very ‘private school’, you know, they’re the ones who have the pitches, and all the options at PE, but actually there are so many different types of girls from different types of backgrounds who love it. And it gives them so much.”
“We did a load of casting, so we met a lot of girls,” says Pip. “There was a good handful of very shy girls who didn’t even really want to look at you, like young, awkward teenagers. But then they’re on the pitch and they were just like a completely different person. And that was very cool.”
When they are working in football, the girls all want to show off how many keepy-uppies they can do. “But the rugby girls it’s very much like they want to show off their power, their strength, their aggression.” They met one girl who, they suspected, had a hard home life, “and she was like, ‘I come here because I need it. I need this.’ I don’t think we’ve ever heard any girls talk that passionately about a sport.”
It’s the nature of a rugby team that it ought to be one place where anyone who wants to play can belong. The irony is that the macho culture of the men’s game made so many people feel so alienated from the sport for so long. It’s only 15 years since Gareth Thomas was so torn about whether or not he could come out that he contemplated killing himself. The women’s game has always been a long way ahead of the men’s on LGBTQ+ representation.
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“I feel there’s a way in which women’s rugby is kind of inherently queer,” says Lib. “Society has a model of how to be a woman. Being a rugby player actually celebrates all the parts that society doesn’t, necessarily. If you’re bigger, there’s a place for you, if you’re wider, there’s a place for you, if you’re short, there’s a place for you. It’s a space where difference is accepted. And there is queerness about that.”
“Obviously the stereotype is just that you’re a lesbian,” said England prop Hannah Botterman on her BBC podcast, Barely Rugby. Botterman is. As she says herself: “I am the stereotypical women’s rugby player.” At a time when every sport’s organisation wants to rainbow-wash its reputation, women’s rugby stands out because its attitude to inclusivity is entirely authentic. No one in it gives a damn where you are on the rainbow spectrum. Some of the most entertaining content produced during this tournament has come from the Kiwi reporter Alice Soper and her partner, who have been putting out videos on how queer each team are (they do it without outing any of the players).
OutSports reported that there were more than 50. Soper reckons that’s an underestimate, and the number is above 150. When she ranked the teams by how many queer players they have, she got video messages from players on the Brazilian and US teams demanding a recount. “We know that the USA belongs on that podium, we’re queer and we’re here,” joked the US prop Charli Jacoby. “But not everyone,” she adds, deadpan. “There are some straight sisters.”
