Konkel keen to throw herself in at the deep end

JADE Konkel is used to helping her teammates out if they get into a spot of difficulty on the pitch, but never before has she had to come to the rescue of a member of the men’s national side in a swimming pool.

That is, until last week. The occasion was a two-day exercise with the Royal Marines. Konkel was taking part with other members of the BT Academy, and one of the more unusual activities undertaken was the underwater rescue of Stuart Hogg. Or, to be more accurate, “Stuart Hogg”.

“You had to tread water, and it was 3.6 metres deep,” she explained.

“You had to get to the bottom, pick up this Stuart Hogg doll, which was really heavy, and then try and get back to the top. It had a wee strip on and a yellow face.

“But I’m a terrible swimmer at the best of times, so you’re trying to get up to the top and you’re losing your breath, then by the end of it, when you’re coming back up, you go ‘That’s it, I’m done, I’ve tried to save Stuart Hogg. He’s just going to have to stay down there’.

“It was really good,” she continued when asked about the two days. “I think it taught you a lot, mentally as well, and leadership stuff. We had to arrange an ambush: how you would organise that, down to the last specific detail. I’d done one before a couple of months ago but I was the only female at that, so it was nice to have some more female company at this one.”

As the only woman in Scotland to be a professional rugby player, Konkel is used to a lack of female company for much of her training, but that is likely to change in the future. Her initial one-year contract is up for renewal in the summer, and, while there are no guarantees, it is almost certain she will be offered a new deal. It is also possible that one or two other members of the Scotland squad will be invited to join her, which would be a just reward for the significant improvement made by the team this season – after six bleak years without a win in the Six Nations Championship, Konkel and colleagues beat Wales and Italy and only lost to Ireland due to a last-play score.

With new contract talks in the offing, however, the flanker herself is presuming nothing either about her own future or that of her colleagues.

“My end-of-contract meeting hasn’t happened yet, so currently I’m still focused on the rest of the academy contract and the upcoming sevens,” she said. “It’s a one-year contract, then you have your review and all that kind of stuff. Obviously I never thought I’d get the contract in the first place, so you just have to take each year as it comes, each day as it comes. You need to keep working hard and earn it.” The 23-year-old works hard, all right, both on her own game and on promoting women’s rugby in general. She was talking at the Murrayfield launch of Be The Best You, a Scottish Rugby campaign to attract more women and girls to the sport. The aim of the campaign is clear: the bigger the playing base, the more competition there will be for places in the national team, the more that team will improve.