Interview ‘If I was selected as I’m mixed race – I am fine with that’
With one year to go to the World Cup, Shaunagh Brown hopes switching from athletics pays off with an England place
Shaunagh Brown took centre stage at the England kit launch this month, confirmation of the impact the prop is having in rugby following her meteoric rise. Five years ago, Brown was a hammer thrower, training at the same track as sprint sensation Dina Asher-smith; now she is a regular on the pitch and playing an equally important role off it in amplifying the message of racial diversity in a predominantly white sport.
“It’s really not a five-minute chat when people ask what I’ve done before rugby,” by,” says the 30-year-old, who is eyeing a spot in England’s squad for or next year’s World Cup in New w Zealand, the one-year countdown n for which begins today. Brown’s s first game of XVS came in 2015, aged 25. Within two years, she received eived her first England call-up while hile training to be a firefighter and had to beg Kent Fire and Rescue Service ervice to grant her leave.
Before that came e a career in athletics, the highlight ght of which was her representing ng England in the hammer at the he 2014 Commonwealth Games. Then, her job as a commercial diver, alo along with a stint in boxing and an a appearance at the Highland Games in Scotland. Raised in Kennington, south London, to a Jama Jamaican father and En English mother, B Brown was brought up acutely aware of her black heritage. From her early e days, she was sur surrounded by wom women and girls of colour at Blackheath and Bromley Harriers, the same athl athletics club where an array of British sprinting talent, in including AsherSmith, the 200 metres world champion, and Asha Philip, learnt their t trade.
“I’m still part p of the club, I still have me membership there,” Brown says. “I st stay in touch with my athletics fr friends, like Dina Asher-smith and her mum. Asha is
also one of my best friends, we roomed together at our first World Youth Games together in 2007 in the Czech Republic.”
The racial diversity Brown encountered in athletics is an experience she cannot vouch for in rugby. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, she was part of the working group set up by the Rugby Football Union ahead of the Premiership’s restart and the “Rugby Against Racism” campaign.
She hopes a similar group can be formed for when the Premier 15s, in which she plays for Harlequins, starts again. It is not an easy role. Her prominence, with her Afro hairstyle, in the recent England kit launch campaign caused some to question whether she was being featured because of her race.
“People will joke I was only included because I’m mixed race,” she says. “I’m fine with that. If me, being mixed race, being female, and having my hair out, makes 10, 20, 30 girls or boys want to have a go at rugby, then the job is done.”
Brown was a newcomer to rugby at the time of the 2017 tournament, where England were edged out by New Zealand in the final. “That was a big thing,” Brown says. “I remember watching [England player] Harriet Millar-mills, what a woman. She was just wrecking the place and carrying the ball through everyone. I thought, ‘I wanted to be like her, that could be me one day’.”