Meet the Athletes: Varsity Women’s Rugby
Fiona Shuttleworth (2015) is a third year vet student and Rugby player.
She was named CURUFC women’s forward of the year following the women’s squad’s win against Oxford in December. Fiona took up rugby in her second year, and has played in two Varsity games.
What made you start playing rugby?
I’ve always been sporty. In my second year I wanted to pick up a sport, and it was between rugby and cycling. I realised cycling was a lot of time at the weekends, when I needed to work, and rugby hours were a lot more doable with my degree.
I didn’t start university rugby straight away; I did a college run development day. The women’s club runs the development days, and they just said come along to the training so here I am now!
How has the season gone this year?
We’ve been in the first division, so it’s been different to the year before when we were in the premiere league. We’ve gone from defending the entire game, to attacking and really polishing that side of our play. Defensively it’s all very similar, but with attacking there’s so much variety and it’s been so beneficial to have an opportunity to work on that side of our play. Throughout the season, in our BUCS games, from last year to this year they’ve developed and we’ve developed. It’s nice to see they’re giving us more challenge, and we’ve improved both attack and defence play. I really feel that is one of the reasons we won varsity. Oxford is in the premiere league, the division above us, so we were a bit worried. We knew that we’d had that season defending and the season attacking, and that gave us a confident push going into the game.
Is women’s rugby becoming more popular?
It’s like how football was ten years ago for women. There is College rugby, but the Pembroke team is Pembroke, St Catherine’s, Corpus, and Peterhouse, and there are still only a few people. There’s been so much improvement by people on the committee, getting people to the development days with proper coaching and varsity athletes to help. When we had our Tigers game, with our second team, we had so many people to choose from. If we had two university teams it would push the club up. We’re starting to get the ball rolling. In Cambridge it’s daunting taking up a sport and doing your studies, but it’s a nice community to be involved in.
What was varsity training like?
We go to pre-season for two weeks in September, and that’s fun, quite intense, a lot of fitness. For Michaelmas we do two training sessions a week, and in the lead up to Varsity we do three a week. We do fitness, agility, weights, everything. I’ve never been fitter than in that period. Before that it’s about trying to get a feel for the squad. The more you play together as a consistent team the more you get a feel for the squad, and that’s definitely what our Coach tried to do this time. Being surrounded by your team all the time, you get to know them on and off the pitch. It was very intense.
How did it feel playing the Varsity game?
It was terrifying. It’s taken so seriously. We went out a full day before, stayed in a hotel, looked around Twickenham, had a team physio session and team talks. I was thinking, it’s a game, it’s a platform for women’s rugby. We’re not the best, that’s Edinburgh, Loughborough, the classics, but we’re privileged enough to get a platform. As soon as I got on the pitch I didn’t look on the stands, I treated it like any other game. Conditions were awful! It was raining the entire day, and in Twickenham the pitch is so good that the ball doesn’t dry on the grass. There was torrential rain for about ten minutes. We had to use the mistakes Oxford made, and they used our mistakes. But it was a lot of fun and you have to make sure you enjoy it because it goes so quick.
Photos courtesy of Fiona Shuttleworth