Rocky Clark followed the wrong crowd and could have been arrested
But she was instead ‘guilted’ onto a rugby path paved with 137 caps and a World Cup win.
The rolling mauls kept coming, to the point where it was impossible to see where one player ended and the other began, seemingly stretching far beyond the physical sum of their parts, slowly making a trench through the pitch. Relentless pick-up-and-go, pick-up-and-go, pick-up-and-go... Henley were grinding down the star-studded Saracens, the only way they knew how. At least, the only way a side that consisted of more than one third props knew how. “That was one of the best games ever played in club rugby,” says Rocky Clark, when we meet the 137-cap England international. “I was playing for Henley, we had six props playing in the pack. I was number eight.
“And, bear in mind, this is the season where we’ve gone into the Prem and we’re getting absolutely hammered, 100-0, every week. On top of that, we were on the verge of folding and Carol Isherwood, our coach at the time, said before the game, ‘right, we’ll play this game and then we’ll have a big planning meeting and whatnot and see what to do next...
“Basically, all season we’d just had twelve or thirteen core players, so we were always having to beg, steal and borrow players to get the game on. And most of the time we’d only have one or two subs.
“Nolli [Danielle Waterman] was scrum-half, I was eight,” continues Rocky, getting back to the game, “and basically Nolli would just pass the ball to me every time and I just ran and ran and ran, either that or pick and go, the backs never really got it. Nolli was just always screaming at me to carry and carry – I reckon I did about thirty or more carries that day. And in the end we got over from a tap penalty and won, 5-0, I think, or maybe 8-0, either way it was tight.”
Until Sarah Hunter finally chased her caps total down before retiring this year, for so long, Rocky was the most-capped England player of all time. A trailblazer whose career spans the greatest transition in women’s rugby history, from park rugby and questionable skillset to 60,000 Twickenham crowds, pro players and a style of ball-in-play rugby that the entire game would do well to take note of.
We meet in her favourite coffee shop in Newport Pagnell, which is a good half hour or so from where she spends most of working life in Bedford, either coaching or doing fitness sessions, but she knows her caffeine and it fuels a chat through her quarter of a century of rugby. “I started at Beaconsfield when I was fifteen,” she says. “Then I went to Henley at sixteen, and I could play adults then, which was mental as you were getting your head kicked in. Then I played at Clifton, Blaydon, Worcester, Wasps, Saracens and now Leicester, I think that’s it. You could get a Premiership out of the teams I’ve played for.”
And before rugby? “I was just a bit of a fat knacker waddling around pitches,” she says, brutally honest as ever. “I was in all the sports teams but we didn’t have that many sporty girls. Netball, basketball, football, hockey, I even tried tennis – I was terrible at it but, you know, I was keen. My friend dragged me along to a rugby session, basically guilting me into it by saying they wouldn’t be able to play because they didn’t have numbers. I did two training sessions played the game and absolutely loved it and that changed the course of my life forever.”
If she hadn’t? “I’d have probably got arrested and been twenty stone,” she says, succinctly. “I possibly followed the wrong crowd a bit, and then rugby just gave me that real focus on my sport and to not hang around with the wrong crowd.”
Only fully professional for eight months of her rugby career – plus the semi-pro set-up in the lead up to World Cups, where, she tells us, they got “about five grand” – Rocky has made ends meet working as personal trainer, coach and, certainly in the early days, some less rugby-driven jobs. “I worked in some electrical warehouse putting wires together,” she says, “and I’ve done loads of jobs in different warehouses and things, but the main stuff was PT and coaching.”
The Henley game stands out for Rocky, perhaps because she spent so long in a dominant England side that the underdog moments are particularly special. Club rugby when she began at the turn of the millennium was very different. “There was nobody watching, you were out in the backfield,” she says. “You had the rubbish changing rooms, the standard was light years away. It was really about much ‘bigger’ forwards – girthier perhaps – and the game relied upon setpiece. Back then, a lot of people [forwards] were there because all they did was scrum and lineout, whereas I was one of the new generation coming through that like carrying and handling as well as the set piece.”
The lack of glamour in the club game, was reflected in the international game as well. “We had hardly anyone watching,” she says of early England caps. “I remember going to one pitch in the arse-end of Wales, and it was absolutely hammering it down. There were huge puddles, and I did wonder whether I might survive the game – am I going to drown at the bottom of the ruck? The standard of the pitch was horrific, massive divots, puddles, it was basically like a bog.”
Even when they went to big grounds, it felt as if they were only open in name. “Today, they’ll have the food vans, bars and coffee places, but then if you were ever allowed in a stadium, you’d have six people on security and nothing else, with about two hundred people watching.”
As for coverage, it was old school. “I remember our results would go up on Teletext and mum used to see them on that,” she recalls. “And that used to be a big thing, especially when I got my first cap in 2003...”
While Rocky has always lived in the Bucks area, never too far from where she was born in High Wycombe – although she bravely moved to Bedfordshire two years ago – she found her rugby place way out west. “I was at Worcester for eight years, that was my real home,” she says. “I absolutely loved playing there – my best mate Ceri Large, who I played with at England, was there – and it was just a really good crack. It was just such a good tight team and that’s also the first team that won the premiership outside of London.”
Worcester won the title in 2012-13, breaking a London stranglehold that had seen Wasps (three times), Saracens (four) and Richmond (three) dominate the club game. “You can’t you just rely on having good players, having that team culture really makes people put in that extra graft, that extra bit, to get that extra one per cent,” she says. “And I think that was the real difference for us how tight we were, how we could bring the best out of people.”
Never leaving her home county, after almost a decade of Rocky making the five-hour round trip twice a week, she moved to Wasps. “The commute was getting hard, some of the other people had left and then I had the opportunity to be coached by Giselle [Mather] at Wasps, and I knew some of the other girls.
So I just thought, ‘maybe it was time to be closer and get coached by Giselle’.”
Rocky played in five Rugby World Cups, winning one in 2014. Fifteen years and 137 caps on from her 2003 debut against Canada, made her a record-breaker in the men’s and women’s game when she retired from international rugby in 2018. Five years may have passed, but the impact is still there. “It’s still pretty fresh, still pretty raw,” she admits. “It does still hurt,” she repeats. “The break in covid almost felt like retirement hadn’t happened because there was two years of not a lot going on, so I wasn’t really missing out.
“If you lose somebody you have those anniversaries that are really tough to get through, the first ones, the first Christmas, the first birthday, and it’s the same with rugby – the first World Cup, the first Six Nations, the first 60,000-thing at Twickenham.
“But what is nice now is that the pioneers are getting recognition, that the opportunities for me off the pitch are increasing and I’m just trying to be the best version of me to put the game on the front foot I guess...
“I think it was always going to hurt whenever I retired, whether it was 35, 37 or 30,” she continues. “And I never realised how hard it was for people to retire and still be involved in the game. I always thought it was weird that x player didn’t come and watch. And now I completely understand because it is too painful. I still talk to people who retired fifteen years ago and they still find it hard to do that.
“But, you know, it has been tough to be on the other side so that’s why I really enjoy working at internationals, that gives me a purpose.”
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