For someone held in such high regard for progressing women's sport in this country, for helping break down barriers particularly in women's rugby, Lynne Cantwell started off on something of a softer footing. Had her first sporting experience ultimately defined her we may not even be having this conversation.
That's because long before winning a record number of Irish caps, playing in four World Cups and inflicting a rare defeat on New Zealand, before moving on to become a board member at Sport Ireland and chair of their women in sport committee, before taking up her role as women's high-performance manager with South African rugby, Cantwell was a perfectly content member of Fingallians Athletic Club in north Dublin, enjoying exactly the same opportunity and attention as all the other young girls and boys of her age.
There may have been some softly teasing questions, like why most of her role models, with the exception of Sonia O’Sullivan, happened to be men, only for the most part Cantwell was blissfully unaware how fortunate she was, that plenty other sports weren’t treating male and female participants as equally as others.
Which suitably extends to the current conversation around women in sport: for every sport like athletics, there are others where barriers or prejudices around participation and motivation and success do still exist, and that’s the area where Cantwell hopes and intends to make further progress.
“Because my first sport was athletics, and from my experience of that, from the very first day with Fingallians in Swords, I had the most incredible 10, 15 years growing up where I didn’t see or experience any barriers to being a young girl in sport, I never knew any barriers existed,” she says.
I was just like let's jump that hurdle or let's just go around it, and we'll get there anyway <br/>
"My experience was being dropped to training, having excellent volunteer coaches, training in groups and travelling all around the county country to race. And it was exactly the same for the girls and boys. It wasn't until I went to the University of Limerick, took up rugby there, when I realised I was actually a woman in sport, this was a bit of a thing. I never felt that before. So that shows, first of all, there can be huge differences between different sports.
“Essentially you just want to be that sportsperson, without realising there are sometimes two different landscapes, and that some women may experience sport very differently to the norm, depending on how that sport is operated.”
Cantwell has spoken before about getting into rugby by accident, certainly not design, and still considered herself an athlete first during her first years at UL, where she was beginning to show potential over the 400m hurdles under the renowned coaching eye of Drew and Hayley Harrison (who went on to nurture Thomas Barr). Once bitten by the rugby bug there was no turning back, only the opening up of a different perspective on sport.
“I think I was always that intuitive person motivated by the fun and joy of sport, running faster or getting better at rugby. So even though I started experiencing some things getting in the way, like you weren’t allowed that, or this ambition wasn’t supported, I still didn’t see a lot of it because I was just like let’s jump that hurdle or let’s just go around it, and we’ll get there anyway.
“Naturally, as you get older, you see these cycles repeating themselves, that things aren’t changing, and you realise that’s just not okay. Then when you come out the other side of it you realise this definitely shouldn’t happen for future generations. It’s also just getting in the way of Irish sport doing better.”
Being a mother of two, Cantwell had to break through another sort of barrier to get into a position of leadership and management with Sport Ireland in 2018, given for many women it’s still not as practical as it might be for men. The need to increase that further is also one of her priorities.
“It wasn’t any sort of righteous thing, like let’s right the wrongs. The fundamental motivation I had around sport was based on how incredible experience it was for me, and my life, all that I loved about it.
“When you’re talking about any leadership or administration, you’re looking at what’s not working well, how can we make it better? With my Sport Ireland role, women in sport committee, my own professional role in sport now, all of that is motivated by trying to create and drive a participation and performance system to get as many women involved as possible, and to get as good an experience as possible.
“So I was just interested in continuing the conduit to sport. Even still when people talk about giving back, I don’t look at it like that. If you’re into sport, play or you run or whatever it is you like to do, that never stops.
“Just when the opportunity came up, I knew from my own experience how important it was, when you’re playing or competing you’re really not too concerned about governance or leadership, you just want to play, but experiences taught me these decisions need to be coming from somewhere. Where are they coming from? Who is representing us up there? Then I learned more about it, realised it is huge, and how dominated most boards and senior management positions are by males.
This was a time when if a women's sport wasn't on TV, you just assumed it wasn't supposed to be there
“I still don’t think it’s about women representing women’s sport. That’s a part of it, it’s about women representing all of sport, that will ultimately lead to better decisions. Ireland is changing too, how our sport represents us, that’s all constantly evolving too.”
The experience of her 13 seasons playing with Ireland, winning 87 caps in all, is unique given it also coincided with a lot of the progress made in the women’s game. As satisfying as that progress was, there was some awareness it couldn’t always be forced either.
“It is important to recognise the age of the sport, and in that context women’s rugby is a lot younger than athletics, so it still has to navigate those layers of maturity. What we’re also seen is lots of other countries can accelerate that pace of maturity. A lot of it is still dictated by the ambition for that sport, the want to actually invest in the women’s game, and understand the women’s game.
“It was definitely a gradual thing. Like I played for Ireland for 13 years, and for the first six years we didn’t win a game. At the same time nobody was watching, so we weren’t aware of things like visibility. This was a time when if a women’s sport wasn’t on TV, you just assumed it wasn’t supposed to be there. And looking at that through a different lens, for a young women athlete that probably meant there was no point in even trying.
“Then we won one game, two games the next year, three games the year after. Obviously in 2013 we won them all, won the Grand Slam, went on to beat New Zealand. So that was 13 years of gradual progression, even before that when I wasn’t on the team.
“A huge thing I’ve discovered as well is that around 90 per cent of research in sport is around the men’s participation. We genuinely don’t know how the insights might apply to the women’s game or women’s sport. What we’re finding more anecdotally is that there are a lot of differences. Sports that just copy and paste from the men’s games to the women’s games maybe aren’t advancing as well compared to sports that focus more on the women’s experience.”
Despite all the advances, certain frustrations remain, like those scenes of the women’s provincial rugby teams being forced to change in grim conditions earlier this year.
“That’s another example of what we’re talking about, it’s not just resources, it’s about leadership and strategy and understanding. If you understand what you’re trying to build then these things won’t keep showing up. We know how to provide elite sport in Ireland, but if it’s not being prioritised in the women’s games, then you’ll still see some reflections of that in the things not being provided.
“I do think as a country we’ve an awful lot to be proud of, the buy-in from multi stakeholders, broadcasters, the media, sponsors, volunteers, the community, we’re seeing a lot more of that around women’s sport.
"John Treacy has been an excellent advocate for progressing gender equality, people like Sarah Keane, Nora Stapleton, it's also about better representation of Irish sport in Irish society, and not based on the past. I think getting more representatives on senior level management boards will be huge. I certainly think my son and nephews will grow up seeing women get the same opportunity in sport as men, there's still just a bit of work to do in the meantime."
