A former pupil of Roundwood Park School and Grove Junior School, both of which are in Harpenden, Sarah began playing rugby when she was six at the town club and she has not looked back since. She has represented Scorpions, Old Albanians, Wasps and her current team, Saracens who she joined in 2013. She has moved between the No 10 and No 12 shirts, having started in the backs before playing as a flanker in girls’ rugby.

Sarah has an interesting profile outside of rugby, too. She was a county netball player and she likes to mix it up with some DJing, music being one of her real interests as is playing squash. Add to that the fact that she is a Construction Management Foundation student at Bedfordshire University after she grabbed 11 GCSEs and three A levels, including one in psychology and you will see that we have someone who is a little different than most. She can probably psychoanalyse you on the squash court while spinning some discs.

Sarah’s rugby mentors have been Dave Sharp, her first coach at Harpenden, her father Neil who went as far as playing school rugby in his career, and England under-20s  coach Giselle Mather.

Welwyn-born, Sarah helped England under-20s win the Nations Cup and, at the end of the 2009 season, played her part in the Old Albanians’ squad that beat Camp Hill to win promotion to the Premiership. They won 13 of their 14 games, scoring 75 tries, 30 more than any other team in their league with Sarah bagging 122 points herself.

Thus far in her developing career, Sarah remembers the Dubai Sevens tournament of 2011 as her favourite moment on a rugby field to date. “It was my first international Sevens tournament,” she recalls, “And it was the first women’s IRB Tournament, too. Despite losing in the final to Canada, the young team came so far together and learnt so much in the short amount of time we had.”

 

Courtesy of the RFU web site. October 2014