Women's Rugby Pioneers - the 1970s mini rugby girls, Dinnington Rugby Club

I played rugby at Dinnington Ruby Club with the boys team from 1979- 1983.

I was the first girl to play at the club, and the only girl playing in the early days on the South Yorkshire circuit. I’m proud to say I was captain of the club’s first silverware when we won the Scunthorpe tournament (see press clippings below!), and captain of the squad on our legendary tours to Ynsybwl in South Wales.

A year or so later our female numbers grew in the format of my fellow scrummer, Victoria King and the super speedy Michelle Gorman. I believe more have followed in our wake and would love to hear from you!

We’d get changed in the boot room, and have a bath AFTER the boys had been in. I know. But my god, we bloody loved it.

I got into it because my dad, Dr Roger Gaubert was instrumental in setting up Dinnington Rugby club and was also one of the first coaches of the minis. I have a vague memory of asking if I could go to Sunday school as I had nothing else to do. Mum and dad (atheists through and through back then!) laughed and dad took me to the Rugby club to join in the training sessions and things snowballed from there!

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to record this somewhere, one day will hopefully write a blog about those wonderful times, but it would be great to connect with other early female Rugby pioneers and start to pull together a bit of history about it! If you know anyone, drop me a line!