A deeper look at the Women’s Rugby 2XV team, with an interview with Captain Kylie Chryss-Connell and Vice-Captain Taz Madan.
Integrating newcomer players into a team sport is always a difficult task. The eternal paradox remains: you need experience to be good enough to play, but to be good enough to play, you need experience — especially in a highly physical sport like rugby, where inexperience can lead to severe injury.
The St Andrews Women’s Rugby Club, however, have almost solved this problem. After the previous leadership registered a 2XV on a whim, the last two seasons have seen the team gain numbers and prominence. With a staggering growth in numbers, they have moved from the non-competitive aspiring league into the BUCS Women’s Scottish Tier 2.
In an interview, team captain Kylie Chryss-Connell placed heavy emphasis on the need for “development spots.” Both she and her vice-captain Taz Madan were newcomers before joining the club in university.
The importance of a space for developing players is clear enough, and Taz put this well: rugby is easy enough to play but difficult to master.
Now that the team plays in a competitive league, they have the space to gain that all-too-important game experience. Kylie joined the team before the 2XV was established two seasons ago, and remarked on how the retention rates have skyrocketed because of its creation.
The leadership team of Kylie and Taz is a well-balanced one, covering both honours and sub honours, forwards and backs. They believe they have an even view of the team because of this and that it gives them an advantage when putting together team sheets.
However, more than half of the club are development players now, meaning that constructing a squad is a tough task when you need to rotate but, arguably more importantly, win. There is a fluidity between the 1XV and the 2XV for this exact reason: even though new players need to play, they also need to be in a fighting chance of winning.
The hard work behind the scenes can be easily discounted by anyone who takes a cursory glance at their results. No wins, 2 losses, and a -105 points difference are not good. However, Kylie and Taz emphasised that the score lines flatter their opponents, and a whole squad of development players are putting up much better of a fight than a team of this calibre should be.
Hopefully, it is only a matter of time until their hard work develops into a win on the league table.
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