The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
‘Marlie tackled the boy so hard his mum ran on to the pitch’
Packer has graduated from raw diamond to England linchpin, via job as a plumber, on her journey to 100 caps
The year is 2000 and the location Oakmeadians Rugby Club in Bournemouth. An 11-year-old Marlie Packer makes her way to one of the back pitches with her Ivel Barbarians team-mates and coaches, easily discernible as the only girl in the under-12s team, in full view of the opposition. It is a moment Clinton Eales, Packer’s childhood coach, remembers well.
“As we walked past, a very large young lad who played prop for them said, ‘Haha, look… they’ve got a girl playing for them!’ Marlie stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at this young lad… well, if looks could kill. She pointed at him and said, ‘I remember who you are’.”
Soon after kick-off, Packer, having tracked the boy from the first breakdown, launched herself at him and in one fell swoop, hauled him to the ground. The moment remains burnt into Eales’s memory. “Absolute perfection,” he says. “The young lad hit the floor and he was sobbing his eyes out. His mum even came on to the pitch and demanded Marlie be taken off!
“That was the turning point for Marlie. She knew she could do some serious damage on a rugby pitch.”
Eight years later, Packer was called up to the England squad for the Nations Cup against Canada, having flown skywards through the player pathway. The Yeovil native was a raw diamond then, but, from the start, her talent was obvious.
Tomorrow, she will become the seventh English female centurion when she captains the Red Roses on her 100th Test appearance in her country’s Six Nations opener against Italy in Parma.
It is a milestone that is even more impressive because Packer has spent more of her life as a plumber than a professional rugby player.
Like many of her peers from England’s 2014 World Cup-winning squad, she took a period of leave to compete in the tournament and returned to working full-time as a plumber for HomeServe, fixing faulty boilers and leaky pipes days after lifting the trophy.
Her vocational identity is one she is fiercely proud of. On her X profile, Packer lists being a “plumber by trade” before being a Red Rose No150. In the days before professionalism, she would rock up to England training in her big red van, crammed with pipe wrenches, nuts, bolts and screws, after a hard day’s work.
“I was always quite gym-orientated,” says Maggie Alphonsi, the former England flanker-turnedpundit. “Marlie hasn’t necessarily always been the best trainer, but that’s what has made her unique. She’s a grafter. Marlie does all her hard work on the field and that’s what makes it very different to probably some of the other back rows that you might see.”
There are many examples of when Alphonsi’s words ring true. Packer won a crucial breakdown penalty at the 2015 Amsterdam Sevens tournament in a winner-takesall tie against the United States which led to the try that sealed Great Britain’s qualification for the Rio Olympics. Despite her heroic contribution, she missed out on selection for the Games, but her disappointment simply drove her to become one of the world’s best openside flankers in XVs.
In last year’s Six Nations, when she took over the captaincy following Sarah Hunter’s retirement, she topped the charts for number of carries (71), defensive rucks hit (52) and jackal turnovers (7). This season, she is the leading try-scorer in Premiership Women’s Rugby.
For Simon Middleton, the former England coach, it was a “nobrainer” to appoint her as captain. “The thing that really convinced me was the way she’s matured as a person over the years,” he said. “She became not just a smart player but a smart manager of players. Her discipline was as good as anybody’s.”
Recently, Packer has been under pressure from youngsters such as Sadia Kabeya in England’s increasingly crammed back row. “The back row is ferocious in terms of competition, but Marlie recognised the challenge in front of her,” Middleton said. “She upped her game.”
Current head coach John Mitchell said: “She has had to overcome adversity since her Test debut in 2008. Her determination to succeed has been ingrained in her over the past 16 years.”
At last week’s Women’s Six Nations launch, Packer was asked about the pressure of keeping her place when younger Red Roses were chomping at her heels. “I just need to keep doing me,” she said, seemingly nonplussed by the question. “I’ve never been anyone else in my career.”
The young girl who got her own back on that Oakmeadians pitch would no doubt agree.