When I arrived at Harlequins in 2018, I didn't come with a plan for how long I'd stay. I came with a love for rugby and a hope that I'd find a place where I could grow. Very quickly, this club became my home: a place that held me through every version of myself over the years and I could never have imagined how much this club would come to mean to me.
It's still by my bed. Every day. I wake up and the medal's next to my bed. And it's, like, as if! But Kildunne is not resting on her laurels. She says the medal is also a reminder of what's left to achieve for her, and for women's rugby in general. Your heart's telling you that you've done it, but I need to refocus. So it's about how can we win the prem, how can we win another Six Nations, more World Cups?
"After an incredible 27 years, with a fair few injuries along the way, the time has come to hang up the boots and step away from playing the game I have loved since I was six years old," she told Saracens' website, external. "To finish my career by running out at the StoneX one last time, in a final against Harlequins no less, could not have been scripted any better. And to have found my way home to the club makes it even more special."
The strategy, called Every Rose: Our Time, includes the goal of becoming the first England team to win back-to-back Rugby World Cups, and getting 100,000 women and girls playing the game across the country by 2030, up from the 60,000 who participate now. English rugby's governing body is also aiming to double its revenues from the women's game to 60m so it can invest more in the grassroots, and to have 3 million Red Roses fans.
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behind him. If everywhere else around town was empty, it was because everyone was here. It was a hell of a way to start a World Cup. Let's show them how we do it in the north-east! shouted out the Mackem Mercury as he set a carnival parade off marching over the bridge towards the Stadium of Light for the kick-off.
