Emily Scarratt profile

There was an excellent article about Emily Scarratt in the Telegraph a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, as it was Christmas, newspaper sales are not that great so many people may have missed it. If you did then go here.

Newspaper coverage of women's rugby has been, well, variable over the years - sometimes good, sometimes terrible, most of the time invisible. In fact over the years its interesting to note that coverage has tended to get worse - as this growing collection of articles shows. When the game first started in the early 80s most international games at least seemed to get proper match reports, but as it expanded this started to change... perhaps some parts of the men's game felt threatened?

So its to good to see a major newspaper's Chief Sports Writer taking a positive interest in the game. Its interesting - even instructive - to note that rugby isn't his major sport (he started off with Formula One and only seems to have started writing on rugby relatively recently) because - frankly - the biggest problem the game seems to have is the prejudice of the media's rugby "experts" (not all of them, I hasten to add, just most). The comments he makes about the inclusion on someone like Emily among the on-screen "experts" in rugby commentary teams are very true, even if maybe tongue in cheek. It would be rather fun to hear the sharp intakes of breath if it ever happened!