The phone call wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still came as a shock. Only injury had ever ruled Sophie Spence out of a Six Nations squad since she’d first played for Ireland six years before. This time, though, it was the coach who was ruling her out.
“Okay, thanks,” she said. Call ended. And then she cried.
sometimes you don't get to decide when you retire
Later in the day she took to Twitter to announce her retirement from international rugby. It wasn’t a fit of pique, she had been giving it some thought any way, she had just hoped she would be able to choose the time.
“But sometimes you don’t get to decide when you retire,” she says, feeling the decision had been made for her.
The natural end point might have been at the conclusion of last summer’s dispiriting World Cup, after which her 2013 Grand Slam-winning comrades Nora Stapleton, Marie Louise Reilly and Ailis Egan all called it a day. But Spence was torn between joining them and wanting a happier memory of her final game than coming on as a replacement in a defeat by Wales that consigned the team to an eighth-place finish.
She’s only 30, so it’s not as if the tank had run out of fuel, but it had been a wearying year, beginning with a four-month spell out with concussion, and concluding with a knee injury that needed three months of rehabilitation.
“And as you get a little bit older, your body doesn’t recover as well,” she says.
“Retirement had been in my head, I wasn’t 100 per cent sure that I wanted to continue, and if your mind’s not right your body won’t push you. But I decided in the end to play on, I was hoping for one more Six Nations, so I was building towards that. I played in the interpros for Leinster, but then I got the phone call. It was the new coach [Adam Griggs], he said it was due to fitness, that I was to play club rugby.”
“Yeah, there were a few tears. I sent a couple of messages to the girls who’d recently retired, just chatted, spent a bit of time with them that evening. I was around with Ailis [Egan] and she said, ‘you look relieved’. And I said, ‘yeah, I think that’s what it is’. It was like a weight was off my shoulders, I didn’t have to decide. I got a few messages that weekend from the Irish camp saying ‘I hope you’re alright’, but I’d actually forgotten that camp had started.”
Spence emailed Anthony Eddy (the IRFU’s director of women’s rugby) to thank him for his support through the years; he phoned her in response to thank her for her contribution to the Irish team.
A considerable one it was too, the Old Belvedere lock’s standing in the game demonstrated by her 2015 nomination for the World Rugby Player of the Year award. She was one of the (literal) driving forces behind the 2013 Grand Slam and the team’s second Six Nations title in 2015, as well as their reaching of the 2014 World Cup semi-finals, en route to which they famously beat New Zealand.
Raw talent
Not bad for a woman who only took up rugby when she was 21, netball her sporting speciality until then. A native of South Shields in the north east of England, who qualified to play for Ireland through her Lisburn-born mother Myrtle, her raw talent was spotted by then Irish coach Philip Doyle at an Exiles training session in London in 2011. She made her debut in the 2012 Six Nations, moved to Dublin, and has been immersed in Irish women’s rugby ever since.
I have great memories, and the friendships that I've made, the relationships that I've built, they've been fantastic
“It’s been a fantastic journey, one I put down to ‘Goose’ [Doyle] taking that chance on me. Coming in to the squad and being mentored so well by the senior players, the culture that we had, the tight-knit group we had, it was just something else. I’m just very thankful that I was part of it.
“I had such special moments with these people, I have great memories, and the friendships that I’ve made, the relationships that I’ve built, they’ve been fantastic. When the days are hard, they’re the people who pull you through, they understand you. You can pick up a phone when you’re feeling low, there’s always a shoulder to cry on. It sounds cheesy, but you are part of a family.”
The future?
“It’s quite scary to be honest, I’ve had a couple of wobbles. I lived my life by the Six Nations for the last six years, and now that’s gone. You were in this structure, you’re training three mornings a week, four evenings a week, then you’re in on the weekends. Now I’m thinking, ‘where’s my identity?’ and how do I go back to reality? The first thing I thought about every day was rugby, and the last thing before I went to bed. Now your weekends are free and you’re thinking, ‘God, I don’t have anything on’.”
No matter what heights you reached, you don’t leave women’s rugby with a healthy bank account, so Spence is now job-hunting. Her status in the game earned her an ‘ambassadorial’ contract with the Bank of Ireland, but that is due to end in May.
Her passion for rugby is undimmed, and she wants nothing more than to work in the women’s game in Ireland. She runs her own academy, coaching young girls around the country, and that’s where she believes the focus should be.
“We weren’t successful in the World Cup, the results showed that things aren’t right. There’s a review going on at the minute, so we’ve got to see what structures are put in place and what resources are put in to the game. If we want to have a top elite team we have to start at the grassroots, and I would love to be part of that. I’ve seen the talent on the ground and it’s massive, it just needs opportunities to develop.”
Long-term plan
“It’s fantastic that Mike Ross and Jeff Carter have been brought in to work with the women’s team, but we need them to be in their positions for four years leading up to the next World Cup, then I think really good things could happen. If it’s only until the end of the Six Nations that’s not enough, you’ve got to have a long term plan.”
you always look back and wonder about what you might have done differently
This echoes much of the thoughts of her former team-mate Ruth O’Reilly when she spoke out to this paper near the end of the World Cup about the farcical preparations for the tournament, and the IRFU’s ‘lack of interest’ in women’s rugby.
“Ruth had some balls to do that. She spoke the truth. Some people questioned whether it was the right moment to do it when we had a game to play, but I read it before the match and it didn’t affect me at all. It’s a shame we couldn’t all have come together like the women’s football team to change things prior to the World Cup.
“But you always look back and wonder about what you might have done differently. But Ruth stood up and said her piece at the end, and maybe that’s helped bring us to where we are now, hopefully the review will have a positive outcome.”
“And I’d love to play a part in the future of the women’s game here. To pay the bills you go where the work is, so if it’s somewhere else in the world to get experience that’s what I’m willing to do – but I would love to stay in Ireland. And I think the likes of myself, Ailis, Lynn [Cantwell] and Fiona [Coghlan] would have a lot to offer, we’d be delighted to be involved, we all want to give back to the game.
“But, yeah, it’s a new chapter in my life. Fingers crossed it’ll come right and I’ll get the chance to do the thing I love most. Rugby.”
