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Ellie Kildunne is aware of she enters 2025 with a goal on her again however the England full again wouldn’t have it another approach as she goals to maintain smashing via the glass ceiling.
The 25-year-old is the reigning Girls’s Six Nations Participant of the Championship, in addition to World Rugby’s Girls’s 15s Participant of the 12 months after having fun with a stellar 2024 for the Purple Roses.
The expectations are sky excessive for extra success as England put together for his or her Girls’s Six Nations opener in opposition to Italy in York on Sunday in what may very well be a transformative yr for girls’s rugby – with a World Cup on residence soil coming down the observe in early autumn.
And whereas Kildunne is aware of the person accolades she has obtained won’t have gone unnoticed; it’s a standing she is embracing.
“2024 was not only a profitable yr for the workforce I play in however personally I used to be recognised and given awards that in all probability nonetheless haven’t sunk in but,” stated Kildunne, talking at Allianz Stadium, the place the Purple Roses will host France within the remaining sport of the Girls’s Six Nations.
“Six Nations Participant of the Championship and World Participant of the 12 months sounds very cool nevertheless it’s not one thing I take into consideration day-after-day.
“I’m conscious I’d get a late hit every so often, I’ve received a little bit of a goal on my again. However that strain is a privilege, I’ve labored exhausting to get to the place I’m. It’s a particular place to be as a result of everybody desires to knock off the particular person on the prime.
“It’s one thing I’m navigating however I’m very proud to be on this place as a result of I do know it comes with energy – not one thing to be abused – nevertheless it’s one thing that if I navigate it proper, I can encourage each room I stroll into in ways in which I haven’t been in a position to earlier than.
“It’s my job to maintain on pushing, smashing via the glass ceilings, and guaranteeing that as feminine rugby gamers we’re seen in areas we haven’t been seen earlier than.
“It’s what we deserve, it’s what the following technology deserves and it’s what the earlier technology deserved as a result of they labored exhausting to get us to this place now. We’ve received the reins, and we are able to steer it to no matter place we are able to. I’m proud to be in that place and grateful as properly.”
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In addition to her success with the Purple Roses in 2024, Kildunne was additionally a part of the Group GB facet that competed on the Paris Olympics in entrance of a packed-out Stade de France.
That have, mixed with taking part in in entrance of a world document crowd for a girls’s rugby match when England took on France within the 2023 Six Nations grand slam decider, offered extra proof of how the sport is rising at a exceptional velocity.
With a house World Cup additionally on the horizon, Kildunne is worked up at simply how a lot curiosity there at present is within the girls’s sport and can’t wait to step into that highlight.
open picture in gallery
She added: “The second we ran out for the primary sport of the Olympics, we have been the primary sport of the ladies’s competitors, the boys had performed, and we’d seen the crowds for that. We’re wired as girls and feminine gamers that you’re all the time going to be second greatest to that and to not anticipate that.
“It felt like Britain’s Received Expertise, you’re stood behind a wall and may’t really see the group, you’ll be able to hear them. The second I got here round that little bit of wall and noticed a sold-out stadium, I actually can’t clarify the sensation apart from saying when children get dizzy and may’t cease laughing, it felt like that.
“Folks needed to observe us play. Moments like that and the Six Nations right here on the Allianz present that individuals wish to watch us play. It’s our present time.”
Be part of the Purple Roses as they kick off their Guinness Girls’s Six Nations marketing campaign, do not miss the final word showdown in opposition to France at Allianz Stadium on Saturday, April twenty sixth. Get your tickets now!
