Where are they now? England Women ‘91 World Cup squad

SUE Dorrington says the more doors that were slammed in her face, the more determined it made her to put on the first Women’s World Cup even though she admits her organising committee didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

The Netherlands were due to host the tournament but plans fell apart leaving charity consultant Dorrington and her committee to take the reins despite no help from the IRB or initially the RFU.

“We were very naive and very young, the story we tell and the story we stick to is we didn’t know what we were doing,” Dorrington, below, tells The Rugby Paper.

“We were naively getting on with it because it was something we needed to do for the women’s game. We were ready for that platform and an international stage.

“We just ploughed on, and there were not any obstacles that were going to stop us. To be honest, we were thrown out of everywhere, and the IRB didn’t want anything to do with it.

“Every door was shut in our faces, but we just persevered with lots of tenacity. There was no stopping us, we started something, and we were going to finish it.”

After the tournament, Dorrington and her fellow organisers Deborah Griffin, Alice Cooper and Mary Forsyth were left to personally balance the books. It looked like they would have to dig deep and find between £25,000 and £30,000 until they were summoned to a meeting with RFU secretary Dudley Wood. Fearing they were for the high jump, instead Wood turned out to be the knight in shining armour they had been looking for before the tournament.

Wood, who spent a decade in the Twickenham hot-seat dragging the RFU into the 21st century, simply wrote them a cheque to allow them to balance the books.

Dorrington adds: “Once we got to the tournament, we were so caught up in delivering it. We had a really good financial manager with us and had forecasted break-even to profit. And it was only some really unfortunate things that happened post the final whistle that brought us into the red.

“The Russians trashed their hotel, so we had to pick up that bill, and then the sponsorship consultancy that worked with us, who didn’t get us any money, whacked in a huge bill.

“I remember we were summoned to Twickenham and we thought that we would get our knuckles wrapped. But Dudley was incredible. He pulled out his cheque book and balanced the books.”