By Jon Page
May Campbell, who represents Saracens in Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), spoke to the media about life in the Red Roses camp as they build towards fixtures against France and New Zealand in preparation for WXV, as the countdown to the 2025 Rugby World Cup begins.
With England’s first fixture against France this Saturday and New Zealand the following week, competition for places is heating up. These fixtures are friendlies to prepare the squad for WXV, which begins September 29th.
WXV1, the top division of WXV featuring the Red Roses, will be held in Canada. May Campbell is one of three hookers named in John Mitchell’s 2nd September training squad, with the other two hookers firmly established international players, Lark Atkin-Davies and Amy Cokayne.
“It’s definitely a healthy rivalry. But when it comes to the training field, it’s very much putting your best foot forward and doing our role within the squad. And then as soon as training is done, I’m actually very good friends with all the hookers. So, it’s a really healthy competition.”
Campbell is one of the least experienced capped internationals in the squad, with her sole appearance coming off the bench in England’s comprehensive 59-3 Women’s Six Nations victory in 2023. Her debut only lasted 10 minutes before being yellow carded for a high tackle, only returning to the field in the 78th minute.
Regarding a second Red Roses cap, Campbell added; “it would mean obviously a huge amount, especially because the first cap didn’t go as planned. But that’s obviously why I’m still here, and why I work as hard as I do, is to obviously try and get more caps and try and represent the Red Roses on multiple occasions. So, let’s see what the future holds.”
Rather than being disheartened about her sole cap to date, she understands the competition in the squad because “you have to remember the Red Roses, they’re the best team in the world.”
Despite her relative inexperience, Campbell is not fazed by the challenge ahead of her for selection, stating “it’s just about obviously trying to bring the areas of the game that I managed to, I think, do relatively well at Sarries (Saracens) and in the PWR into this environment.”
Campbell and a majority of the squad have been training together for 5 weeks, in a long preseason block to prepare the squad for the challenging season ahead of them. “It’s definitely been nice being in camp as much as possible. And, you know, just being able to train in a full-time environment, whereas that’s not normally the case for me. I think it’s just invaluable. And being able to work with the pack and getting all the reps through set piece has been great.”
With the PWR semi-professional, many players have to work fulltime jobs alongside playing rugby and Campbell is no different. She has recently joined a fintech startup as their head of talent. Although England Rugby announced professional contracts for 32 Red Roses players, Campbell was not among them and so, has had to rely on the understanding of the England coaching staff to balance her international rugby prospects and her career.
“I’m very lucky that England have been hugely flexible in terms of facilitating me to work in camp. And then also my bosses being very flexible. And whilst I’m in camp, sort of working part-time.”
Despite the shadow of the World Cup in 2025 looming over Campbell and her teammates, they’re not getting ahead of themselves. Their priority is currently match against with France this weekend.
However, excitement is particularly rife for their match the following week, as the number one ranked side in the world: the Red Roses, face the reigning World Cup champions: the Black Ferns. This games proximity to next year’s Rugby World Cup will help decide who enters the World Cup as tournament favourite.
“I think at the moment there’s obviously a lot of excitement going into next year, with it, yeah, now I guess I got on the countdown to it, but we definitely haven’t lost sight of actually the competitions that are meeting us head-on, like with WXV and then obviously the Six Nations before that, so we need to get our preparation right and then we can actually really then look forward to how to then best prepare for the World Cup.”
Not fazed by the expectations and pressure that come with the Red Roses jersey, ‘we want to play how we want to play, and I think because of the amount of experience that we have in the squad everyone’s just taking that sort of pressure in their stride.’