World Cup winner on
GILL Burns MBE is a one-club player, Waterloo (now Firwood Waterloo) and also captained Lancashire, The North, England & The World XV... and the Waterloo Vets. She is Lancashire RFU President 2019/20.
The former Chester College student and county hockey player found time to talk about her life in rugby.
Gill – at the start of your career you were played a lot of sports but also danced.
My mum was a dance teacher so I was dancing before I could walk. I have always danced but it became apparent at an early age that I wasn’t going to be a ballerina.
I still enjoy dancing and only retired from my mum’s dance school in my mid-30s. I was also a dancer whilst I played for England.
Do you see a link between dance and sport?
Yes, I think that’s why people bounced off me.
Dance, and ballet in particular, gave me great core stability. I mean sports science is much better now than it was then so I didn’t understand why I was quite as strong I was.
When I first started playing rugby I knew I was powerful but people couldn’t tackle me as I had this strong core from dancing and other sports. It very much helped me in the lineout too, which was my forte.
In those days of course there was no lifting, it was just about jumping power.
So I had power and the ability to push people away and get high up in the air. I used to win lots of lineouts. I definitely think my dancing helped to become a strong and powerful rugby player.
You studied at Chester College (now the University of Chester) and were a county hockey player?
Hockey was my main winter sport when I was at Chester. I also played basketball, swimming, athletics... I played lots of sports.
So why did you decide to give rugby a try?
I had been a PE teacher for just about a year and I was keen to teach all sports to children.
I introduced the boys to dance which at the start they did not like but when they realised you could use cool themes like ‘Grandstand’ it meant they could link their dancing to other sports, they loved it.
I also did cricket and football for the girls – things that girls had not had the chance to try before and I wanted to give them those opportunities.
I had gone to a hockey tournament in Hightown when we played on the grass.
I was playing for Chester against Hightown and I knocked over one of the Hightown players as I went through to score a goal.
She obstructed me as she turned her back on me (in those days you could not turn your back on the opposition). So I knocked her out the way, scored the goal and then went to help her up.
She said: “The way you play hockey, you should be a rugby player.” I thought she was being funny with me so I replied: “You did obstruct me” but she came back: “I’m not having a go at you, I just think that you would be a good rugby player. I play rugby and enjoy it and you should too.”
So for the rest of the game all I could think of maybe I should give this a go, another game, another opportunity. I spoke to her after the game and there was also another girl in the team who played at Liverpool Poly.
They both said come and play – they were both small and I think that they liked the look of someone who was nearly six foot tall and fast, as I was a sprinter then.
“We train at Waterloo Rugby Club and we’ll be there next Sunday.” The next Sunday I drove up to Blundellsands, parked up and went onto the back pitch and saw a dozen girls in the far corner and an excited captain Julia ran down the pitch and said “Have you come to join us?”
She seemed excited as most of them were five foot tall and then I arrived and I never looked back. As soon as I started that first session I knew that I had found the sport for me.
So why did you stay at Waterloo? You were clearly a talented player and you could have gone down south?
I was asked many times and I argued then and still argue today that if you are good enough to stay at your own club and make that better then every area should have a team that is of a standard that anyone locally can aspire to.
I just felt that it was important that we had a team of quality in the North West. Me staying at the club did bring other people in and we were regularly fourth or fifth in the Premiership for a good decade.
We beat all the big clubs, not routinely, but we were a very competitive side with lots of internationals and that is when we were at our peak in the 1990s.
People in the North West aspired to come to Waterloo because we were a recognised team, we had a few internationals who were prepared to stay and work with each other.
We trained together, we had a fantastic, fantastic camaraderie, and we didn’t have the support that the players these days have. We did it ourselves and it meant more to us as we were the ones who set the training programmes, worked and trained together, and socialised together.
You have hinted at challenges that you faced as a player but also a woman player. Do you have any stories about that?
People have often been critical before they know anything about the game.
Really it is not worth getting upset about those who make comments, but one thing I have done is to let people say what they want.
If they are ignorant nothing you are going to say will change that if they have decided before they have even seen the game.
I always like to give people the opportunity to watch a game, then they can make a comment and I will accept constructive criticism but only after they have had a chance to witness a game of rugby played by women who know how to play.
I know in the early days if you got a team of adult women who had never had anything to do with rugby, then the standard wasn’t as good as when people had been playing for a long time. Some people who watched