England internationals keen to teach and inspire Iron Maidens

Maidenhead's new director of women's rugby, Stephen Jones, says England internationals Sarah Hunter and Rochelle (Rocky) Clark have already asked if they can help coach a few sessions for the Iron Maidens in the coming months, and the new director of women’s rugby is confident he can attract more celebrated names down to Braywick Park to inspire the women and girls.

The club have re-named its women’s team ‘The Iron Maidens’ and plans to build that up while establishing new u13s and u17s teams for junior girls.

To encourage the players ahead of their first competitive matches, and to potentially attract others to join the club, Jones says some of England’s greatest female players have agreed to come down and take sessions.

Rocky and Sarah have more than 260 international caps between them while another player who grew up in Maidenhead, Abby Dow, is currently one of the best players in world rugby on current form. He’s hopeful a number of top-level players can come down in the coming months to ‘teach and inspire’ the girls and should any of the Maids players show signs of real potential, the club will look to move them on to a higher level.

“Sarah Hunter has said let me know when she can come down and help out,” he said. “She’s hat 123 caps. Rochelle Clark is England’s record cap holder for men and women, with 145 caps, more than Jason Leonard. She has said she’ll come down and do sessions for us.

“I’ve only got to ask the girls and they’ll come down. That’s what they’re like. As soon as we get the team together and a bit fitter, we’ll get these high-level people in, not just to coach but to chat to the players as well. Sarah, Rocky, these people are just inspirational. I’ve got a few contacts, so we’ll try and get people down to teach us and inspire us.”

Jones added: “Abby Dow is absolutely brilliant. In my opinion she’d be in a world team right now. She’s absolutely dazzling. We’ve not been in touch with her yet, as it’s a World Cup year and I didn’t want her to feel like she had to come down. But we’ll be keeping her posted with what’s going on and will ask her to come down when we get going. Everyone has heard of Abby and the club is incredibly proud of her.

“And if the club does have some highflyers, we’ll push them on to representative teams elsewhere.”