Former Ireland captain Claire Molloy: "Boots could be finance that stops players buying food. They are not making a living being a professional athlete. They are just about scraping by. We need to see it as a unique product. It's not just the men's game with different sized people"
Tuesday 28 November 2023 18:37, UK
Claire Molloy, former Ireland captain and current Bristol back-row, chats exclusively to Sky Sports about women's rugby struggles, her life as an A&E doctor and rugby player, and where Irish rugby has gone wrong...
With every season that passes, fresh attendance records are being set in the women's game. From November 2022 when an epic World Cup final between the Black Ferns and Red Roses saw a world record 42,579 pack out Eden Park, to the near 60,000 fans who watched the 2023 Six Nations Grand Slam finale between England and France at Twickenham, and almost 10,000 supporters at the Premier 15s (now Premiership Women's Rugby) final earlier this year.
Yet, just last week, Ireland and Saracens back-row Grace Moore - who played in each round of the Six Nations earlier this year, and came off the bench for Saracens in their Premier 15s semi-final in June - was forced to take to social media to ask for help with a sponsor for rugby boots ahead of the forthcoming season.
It's a disconnect in clear terms, but by no means unusual.
Bristol back-row Molloy represented Ireland in 74 Tests between 2009 and September 2021, retiring as captain. Throughout the entirety of her rugby career, the 35-year-old has balanced life with another job: an A&E doctor.
Speaking to Sky Sports on the phone from her car outside Bristol Bears' HPC, having just come off an emergency shift at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and rushed to another nights rugby training, when Molloy began her rugby career as a budding medicine student in Cardiff, there was no such thing as a women's rugby player who did not work elsewhere.
Times are changing for the better in the sport, but as Molloy points out, women's rugby is teetering in an uncomfortable position as it tiptoes its way into professionalism.
"There definitely could have been more investment and support in Irish rugby. But looking at the nature of the game, would it have been nice to have my boots paid for? Yeah. But would I have preferred investment and better skills coaches? Probably. That's probably because luckily enough I've had an income to supply my boots.
"Looking at Grace's [Moore] situation, I've seen Jade Konkel, Scotland international, make the same plea on Twitter. It's not unique to the Irish girls. These contracts we're looking at now in a professional light, there's still a cost of living crisis.
"They are not getting massive salaries. £400 a year for boots, that could be a finance that stops them buying the groceries they want and the food they need.
"They are not making a living being a professional athlete. They are just about scraping by in the women's game. There may be full-time contracts for internationals, but you've got to rent somewhere in Dublin. How quickly is that going to gobble up your salary?
"What we'll probably see in years to come is that this model of rugby has to be very careful not to price out people from lower income backgrounds, and that whole talent pool being excluded. Because financially, families can't support these players to develop to become athletes the way the more affluent can.
"That's something I discuss with friends across club levels. As we step into a semi-professional/professional era, at the moment the girls that can commit either need a job that can allow them to, or need the financial support that means they don't have to work the hours to make the time.
"You're looking at 15/16 hours a week just training and adding in a matchday on the same time. It could be a 25/30 hour week. If you add in travel, the prep around training, the feeding. It's the equivalent of more than a part-time job, and yes there are contracted players, but there are still a good chunk across the Premiership that aren't getting paid and doing it for the love of rugby. And they are the ones that can afford to do it.
"I hope rugby doesn't leave behind all those types of players. In increasing diversity in the game, we want everyone to see someone like themselves on the pitch, and that's really important going forward."
A Galway native, if Molloy was always going to be a doctor - having been fascinated with medicine and science "from day dot" - she was seemingly destined too to have some involvement in sport.
Remarkably, each of her three siblings represented Ireland at different sports in underage levels: older brother Liam rowed for Ireland up to U23 level and trained for the 2008 Beijing Olympics before injury, sister Emily played goalkeeper underage for Ireland's national field hockey team, and younger brother Tim represented the Republic of Ireland football U19 side.
Molloy's sport of choice proved Gaelic football, representing Galway and even featuring in 2005's All-Ireland senior ladies final at Croke Park off the bench at the age of 16. Moving to Cardiff in 2007 to study medicine, it was only at that point Molloy's sporting talents were opened up to the world of rugby union.
Memories of watching the Six Nations growing up aside, and attending an Ireland defeat to France in 2005 at Lansdowne Road when her father got his hands on tickets, Molloy jumped into rugby somewhat unknowingly, but with two feet all the same.
"In my era there wasn't very much underage rugby. There were pockets around Ireland where you could maybe get involved, like I know Joy Neville [former Ireland international and current referee] played a bit of underage but it was a unique situation. It's very different now.
"I came over to Cardiff and there was no Gaelic football to be played. I had an interest in rugby and thought, this looks like a sport for me. Being in Wales, it seemed like a natural fit.
"I did fancy myself as a nippy back when I first joined, but they quickly put me in the forwards. They knew I liked being busy, so back-row has stuck since then!"
And busy she has been. To even conceive of a career involving being an A&E doctor and Test rugby player (and then captain) is near unthinkable. Yet, Molloy was part of the most successful period in Irish women's history.
In 2013, she picked up a Six Nations Grand Slam medal. She was captain of the first Ireland side ever to qualify for the Sevens World Cup in the same year, while at the 2014 Women's Rugby World Cup, she was part of the Ireland side which knocked out New Zealand to make the semi-finals. In 2015, Molloy picked up her second Six Nations winners medal.
All of the above she picks out as career highlights, but the low point of her career arrived just prior to international retirement in September 2021, when a World Cup qualifying tournament in Parma brought shock defeats to Spain and Scotland, which saw Italy qualify for the World Cup at Ireland's expense - despite Ireland having beaten them 15-7 earlier in the process.
After missing out on that World Cup, Ireland have since gone on to experience the worst period in their history, culminating in a 2023 Six Nations Wooden Spoon after five defeats, the result of which saw them placed in the third tier of the new WXV tournament during October, playing the likes of Kazakhstan, Colombia and Spain - beating the latter only due to a try with five minutes to play.
How have Ireland gone from Six Nations champions to their current state in just eight years?
"I don't think I'll go back to Parma ever. That was a particular low point in my career, for Irish rugby, and the echoes that are still being felt by the players today.
"Missing out on that World Cup and taking a load of steps back for Irish rugby, the legacy itself is heartbreaking. I definitely feel a little responsible for not leaving the shirt in a better place in that situation. I hope the damage will be undone.
"There's been lots of analysis, conversations, reviews and articles written about Irish women's rugby. You have to look at where has the Irish club game progressed? Where are we producing players? Keeping hold of them? We've missed the boat.
"There were opportunities at the height of 2014, 2015, 2016, where that was the time to look at the structure of the game in terms of clubs, develop better quality competition, look at the Interpros and give continuity to players and coaches with a regular schedule.
"I don't know how many times the season structure has changed year-on-year. How do you plan for that? How do you maintain and retain players when they don't know when the Interpros will be this year? And that's been the same for many years."
"Trying to keep that talent there, there's not one single answer. I'm not a high-performance director. There's been investment, the first bit of professional contracts for the 15s game, but we need high-quality competition within a domestic structure to develop these players to be able to step up to international.
"If you look at the competitive nature of the English Premiership, they are 10/15 years ahead of the development pathways in Ireland.
"Look at Scotland, Wales, the vast majority of their contracted players are playing in the Prem. The Canadians heavily send their players over, there's a strong American contingent. It really is becoming the premier competition to develop talent in the world.
"Ireland need to create a competitive league which will keep players there, make it less attractive to move over here and have those homegrown talents strengthening the league and giving that competition day in, day out, so players can emerge.
"It's not going to be written in a day. If you look at the investment and development in the Irish Women's Sevens programme, how many years has it taken them to get Olympic qualification? That's how long it takes, with continuous progression and hiccups along the way.
"Now look at them, a mature group of players that are performing on a world level. That's taken time and to expect it to take less time in the 15s programme is naïve."
"When you are surrounded by death and disease, aggressive and drunk patients, it can make working in A&E an interesting and often stressful environment" - Nick Edwards, In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of Life as an A&E Doctor
"Rugby is great. The players don't wear helmets or padding; they just beat the living daylights out of each other and then go for a beer. I love that" - Joe Theismann
There seems little logical explanation for how Molloy has combined two exceptionally fast-paced ways of life and succeeded. So how has she?
"It's hard going. And it's only getting more difficult to be honest. It's a great evolvement of the game that there are so many full-time players now. In Bristol we have a strong cohort. Everyone is progressing to these full-time models, and it's been huge growth over the last few years.
"At the same time, it's become more and more challenging for people with jobs. It's been difficult for all our directors of rugby to be managing full-time athletes and full-time workers, it's becoming trickier and trickier, but it's a great sign for progress.
"Since retiring from Ireland, my main focus has been work. I've been in my A&E programme to become a consultant since 2015, and I can tell you it doesn't normally take that long. It's been part-time years, years out, and I've really stretched it out to juggle rugby, but there has to come a time in your life when you think about what pays the bills.
"How long do I want to work multiple night shifts in a row? Not for many more years. I'd like to step off the crazy shift pattern I'm experiencing to have a better quality of life."
In an interview with Sky Sports back in 2018, former England international Danielle Waterman revealed Molloy would come off A&E shifts and arrive straight into training with Wasps. An enormous effort of human endurance which the flanker admits remains the case today, and is particularly challenging owing to the mix of physically demanding rugby training and mentally taxing work shifts.
"That's the case right now! I come straight off the shop floor. I'm very lucky I have a self-rostering job where I can choose my shifts. It doesn't mean there's less of them, but means I can tailor it around seasons.
"It's meant I have to work a lot before games, I regularly miss training. There's nothing I can do as the vast majority of our work comes in the later hours, that's the nature of the job, that's when our patients come in. Maybe a fifth of my shifts are 9am-5pm, the rest are all unsociable hours or weekends.
"There's probably not as much standing or running around as you'll see in Casualty or Greys Anatomy! But I think it's more the cognitive load. As in you'll be making hundreds of decisions every shift, and quickly.
"You're making rapid assessments and decisions to manage your patients efficiently. In A&E you're dealing with a whole variety, anything can present. You're delving into a whole lot of knowledge every single time.
"The decision-burden just gets higher as you become more senior. The physical toll isn't much, but the mental toll can be exhausting. And then you also have the emotional toll of the stories, discoveries, the patients, the situations we see.
"The quick transition we and all healthcare providers face is the biggest challenge. In front door medicine, you have to very rapidly deal with, sometimes, the worst day of someone's life, and then you have to assess the next patient and give them the same care, dignity and respect.
"You have to give them a fair chance and not bring the emotional baggage into their situation. You could be telling someone the worst news they will ever hear, and then the next patient you could be reassuring them nothing's wrong. So that contrast of situation you experience. We're constantly under pressure, as are all A&E departments.
"Then you turn up to rugby training and you've dropped a ball, and you think in the grand scheme of things, that's not the worst thing that's happened today. Your perspective is very different, but obviously you come into this environment in Bristol and what's demanded of you is professionalism and accuracy in a highly competitive environment. You can't really be bringing in your baggage either. It's a challenge.
"A bad day at work for me might look very different to our full-time athletes, or teachers or students. It's all perspective and different pressures and stresses."
Having come close up to now in the form of semi-final heartaches, Molloy says as far personal ambitions go in the twilight of her fine career, sealing a Premiership title would be the "icing on the cake."
Beyond that, a wide-ranging discussion branches out to the work needed to give girls the confidence to remain in sport after secondary school, with dropout numbers still very high, in addition to community projects in all areas for women's rugby to have the best chance of continuing to grow.
Since arriving to Cardiff and first picking up the oval ball in 2007, much has changed for women's rugby according to Molloy. But, at the same time, there remains further to go.
"There's been great progress with women's rugby, but there is obviously still progress to be made. There are issues ongoing. The women's game still needs support and development. The TNT broadcast deal is massive, and Sky Sports' relationship with the Red Roses as well. That commercial viability of the game is key going forward.
"Rugby is looking at competing against other sports. It's got to be accessible and seen for the game to be sustainable. A much richer environment, giving different perspectives. We don't want to hear from the same people from the same group.
"I hope the boards become more diverse and it's not just women's rugby looking at a bunch of men, and that we're represented on these boards as well so the decision making is not just done with their perspective.
"We need to see women's rugby as a unique product. It's not just the men's game with slightly different sized people. It offers a lot."
