Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Georgia sat in the Redford RFC carpark and looked through the windscreen at the low, white building.
The clubhouse had barely changed since she played there.
The paint was dirty, flaking in places, and someone had sprayed a graffiti tag high up on the wall.
The painter must have leant right out from the balcony to spray it, and some of the letters were wonky.
Georgia squinted, but she still couldn’t make out exactly what it was supposed to say.
She’d lost contact with the club and with the girls’ team after she’d gone to uni. Now Erin - who she’d deliberately packed away into a box along with all the other normal, cringey childhood memories she’d rather forget - had pulled her back.
Georgia turned off the car radio and sat in silence for a moment.
She wasn’t worried about coaching the girls.
Westcliffe encouraged the team to do as much community engagement as possible.
It was good for ticket sales and had more than once turned up a promising academy player.
She’d planned her session on the drive down, a set of passing and communication drills that she could run in her sleep.
A white Volkswagen Tiguan pulled up, swinging into the spot alongside her. Erin smiled and waved through the window. That was who she was worried about.
Georgia opened the door and stepped out, pulling her boot bag with her. She waited for Erin to make her way around the side of the cars, scraping a line in the dirt on her hub caps with the toe of her trainers.
In her sports kit, hair tied back, face stripped bare of any makeup, Erin looked every inch the gay rugby girl. If Georgia had been meeting her for the first time now, there would have been no doubt about Erin’s queerness.
“Hey,” Georgia said, all too aware of how nervous she sounded. Georgia could feel herself easing into old habits. She wanted to impress Erin and make her like her, respect her.
She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was a full adult woman, with her own place, her shit together. Her own life, with people who liked her. Who, in Matt’s case, fancied her. More than that: she was a professional. Not just any professional – the captain of her team. International superstar.
Well, maybe that was taking it too far. She was more dependable name on the team sheet than breakout television personality.
She could pick up small sponsorship deals for boots and electrolytes, things fans of women’s rugby would know.
She didn’t get the big mainstream deals that Riley and other players with marketable faces and big social media accounts pulled in. But either way, she wasn’t seventeen.
She didn’t need to impress Erin.
“Hey,” Erin said back. She had her hands shoved into her tracksuit pockets, and she rocked back on her heels for a moment. Maybe she was nervous, too.
“No Tam today,” Erin offered. “Still on her honeymoon.”
“Yeah. Lucky bugger. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at two weeks in the Maldives.”
Erin smiled. “No indeed. Especially not with this weather.” She held up her hand to the sky and looked upwards, closing one eye against the brightness. “Forecast says we should be fine, but you never know.”
Erin was nervous. Georgia was certain now. The small talk, the fidgety eye contact. There was no spikiness this morning. They stood in silence for a moment, neither of them quite sure how to move the conversation forwards.
“Thanks for coming down,” Erin said eventually, as she turned and started walking out towards the pitches.
“No problem,” Georgia said, hoisting her boot bag and following her. “Sorry for the short notice - it’s been a crazy week, with the match tomorrow.”
Erin nodded. “I saw the fixture list. Edinburgh, Aegis, right?”
“Yeah, and it’s always a tough fixture. Bad blood there, you know?”
“Still playing second row?”
“Pretty much. Eight, sometimes.” When Georgia first went up to Westcliffe, just as the team was turning professional, she’d played anywhere they put her.
Her height kept her out of the front row, thankfully, and she wasn’t quick enough to spend much time on the wing.
In the last few years, as the team stabilised under Fleur and Maggie, she’d made the number 5 shirt her own - both for Westcliffe and then for England.
“Filling holes, you know. Doing what’s needed. ”
They walked in silence for a few more paces, the tension between them growing with each step. Georgia fiddled with the keys in her pocket, searching for something to say.
As they reached the pitch, a few of the girls jogged up from the changing rooms in twos and threes, brightly coloured laces in their standard black boots, high ponytails bobbing. Erin dropped the bag of balls at her feet where it landed with a soft squelch.
She hadn’t been lying about the condition of the pitches they played on.
Georgia hadn’t seen a wetter pitch in years - all the premiership, all the international matches were played on hybrid pitches that combined both real turf and artificial grass.
The drainage systems kept them drier than these community pitches, and the amount of use they got was minimal.
The girls were getting closer, jogging in curving arcs to avoid the boggiest parts of the pitch, water splashing up underneath their studded boots.
Erin stopped Georgia with a hand on her arm. “Can I buy you a coffee later? As a thank you for coming out and doing this?”
Georgia’s attention was drawn to the press of Erin’s hand against the sleeve of her insulated training top. Not even an hour ago, it had been Matt’s hands on her waist, on her arm. She must have stared for too long because Erin withdrew her hand.
“No worries if not,” she said. “If you’ve got plans or need to get back home.”
Georgia felt the sting of her own hesitation in Erin’s voice.
“No,” she blurted. “No, I don’t.” She swallowed, took a breath. “Coffee would be great.”
***
Forty-five minutes later, covered in mud and absolutely beaming, the Redford girls were improving visibly. Georgia called them over. “Better,” she told them. “Looking much better.”
The girls nodded, some leaning on their hands, panting hard to catch their breath.
Their hair was sticking out of ponytails and from under scrum caps.
Not a single one had given anything less than their utmost. They were chaotic, a little raw, but they were eager to learn and improve.
Georgia remembered being in their shoes, soaking up every nugget of information she could. Rugby had felt like magic.
“You don’t have to be perfect,” Georgia told them, moving her gaze from one panting red face to the next. “But you do have to want it. Rugby is all about communication and connection.”
Their faces were so open, so earnest. They were hanging on every word she said, drinking it in like the word of God. Erin stood behind her, somewhere over her shoulder.
“If I’m running with the ball, and there are three defenders up ahead, maybe I can get past one.”
“Hand off to the face,” one of the girls enthused.
Of course one of them would bring that up.
Of course that was all anyone remembered from her long, successful career.
That one viral clip had followed her ever since, popping up in compilations of the most brutal takedowns.
It even, occasionally, appeared in some thirst trap video posted by one of Westcliffe’s devoted fans.
“Right,” Georgia agreed. “But number two, definitely number three, they’re going to bring me down. So I need to know where my teammates are, that they’re there to support. If you’ve got the ball, be looking around, know where your support is. Anticipate. And for all that’s holy, pass early!”
The circle of girls around her laughed.
“When you’re running support, I want you to shout, all the time. I know it sounds overkill, but be loud.”
The girls nodded seriously.
“Right,” Georgia said, passing the ball back to the girl standing opposite her. “Any other questions?”
There was a long beat of silence as the girls looked at each other, no-one quite daring to make the first move. Eventually, after a quick burst of nervous whispers, one of the girls to Georgia’s right piped up.
“What’s Riley Carter like in real life? Is she as cool as she seems on TikTok?”
The girl next to her snorted. “She means - is she as fit?”
Georgia rolled her eyes at them. Riley had a stranglehold on social media, her fit checks and trending dances earning her legions of devoted fans.
Perhaps she was uptight, perhaps she was just too old to get it, but Georgia was not a devotee of the cult of Riley.
She’d rather let her performances on the pitch speak for themselves.
But there was no way she’d rain on the girls’ parade.
“Yes, she’s very cool. Now go back and set up again, give it another go. ”
As the girls ran off, setting up their attacking and defensive lines for another round of the drill, Georgia chanced a look sideways. Erin was watching her steadily, a gentle smile on her face.
“Not part of the fan club?” she asked. There was something conspiratorial in her tone, us versus them, that Georgia wasn’t sure Erin had earned.
The trouble was that she wanted Erin to have earned it. Despite everything, Georgia wanted to stand there, shoulder to shoulder, and be conspiratorial, gossip like old friends.
Instead, Georgia shot her a sideways look, keeping her face as neutral as possible. Erin returned it, her mouth twisting sideways into a knowing smirk. Georgia nodded, crossing her arms against her chest and turning her attention back to the girls on the pitch.
“Communicate!” Georgia shouted, taking a few steps forward, away from Erin’s side.
The girls had bunched up again, catching themselves in a cycle of heavy rucking.
Several heads turned in Georgia's direction, and the line stretched out again, the attackers setting up a nice overlap to break through the defensive line and score.
“Yes!” Erin shouted as the ball was touched down, jumping in the air next to Georgia like it was a real score in a championship game. She was focused on the girls, already moving towards them, congratulating, encouraging, as they flocked around her like ducklings.
As Erin called them back in to run through the next part of the drill, Georgia looked out at the cluster of eager faces and swallowed the knot that had risen unexpectedly in her throat.
She had followed Erin like that, once. Had looked up to her like the second coming of her own, private Jonah Lomu.
It would be so easy to feel like that again. Watching Erin with the girls, Georgia could feel a rising need to impress and have that smile turned on her.
Erin was framed beautifully against the line of trees at the edge of the pitch, their leaves just starting to change from green to gold, and that intense crease between her brows was back.
She smiled down at one of the girls, her hand landing casually on a shoulder as she made her point.
That shoulder had been Georgia’s once. And then, that night, alone in the locker room, Erin had stomped all over that hero worship, trampled Georgia’s teenage crush under her studs.
Now here Georgia was, years later, still chasing Erin’s shadow across a rugby pitch, heart thudding like it hadn’t learned a damn thing.