USA's unlikely Women's Rugby World Cup triumph: Locks from Hell, KGB agents, and a White House visit

New York Times

20 hours ago

Few outside the United States gave the team much of a chance.
The U.S. is not a traditional rugby nation and the squad had barely trained together ahead of the inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup. Many of them had never even met each other before.
Even their journey to Wales, where the tournament was being staged, was fragmented. After transatlantic flights to London, some travelled on to the Welsh capital, Cardiff, by train. The rest were crammed into vans and sang noisily as they headed west on the wrong side of the road. Their head coach — who'd had no say over squad selection — joined them a few days later.
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A brutal schedule lay ahead: four games in nine days meant little time to acclimatise and even less to recover. But the Eagles embodied their team motto: they were harder, faster and stronger.
If the rest of the world didn't know it, they soon would.
This year's Women's Rugby World Cup starts on Friday when host nation England faces the U.S. in front of more than 40,000 fans at Sunderland's Stadium of Light in the north-east of the country. The 32-match tournament is expected to break attendance records, with the final in Twickenham, London, already an 82,000 sellout.
But 34 years ago, things were very different. Twelve international teams arrived in Wales in April 1991. From Japan to New Zealand and Canada to Sweden, those players were pioneers who helped shape the history of women's rugby union. But the tournament would not have taken place at all had it not been for the Founding Four.
Deborah Griffin, Susan Dorrington, Mary Forsyth and Alice D Cooper were team-mates at Richmond Rugby Club in south-west London. Using innovation, determination and perspiration, they overcame many hurdles — not least a lack of recognition from the International Rugby Board (IRB), then the sport's world governing body — to conceive and stage the tournament, which involved significant personal sacrifice and expense.
'It was not so much no support — they threatened to sue us. The IRB said, 'You're going to denigrate the sport. We can't allow you to do it',' Cooper, a copywriter and film-maker by trade who served as the tournament's press officer, tells The Athletic.
'Now, the thing was, the Women's Rugby Football Union was not affiliated to the Rugby Football Union (English rugby's governing body). So the IRB had no jurisdiction. So we didn't actually have to ask permission, because it wasn't relevant.
'We had no experience, no money, no sanction. And we just did it anyway.'
Over in the United States, women's rugby union was thriving. Thanks to the introduction of Title IX in 1972, a swathe of versatile, highly skilled female athletes discovered new sports such as rugby, which enjoyed a healthy college and club scene through that decade and beyond.
Basketball's loss was rugby's gain when it came to totemic duo Tam Breckenridge and Tara Flanagan, collectively known as the Locks from Hell. Breckenridge made her international debut in 1988 and Flanagan, who was drafted by the LA Stars in an early iteration of the WNBA, took up rugby in 1989 after the end of her college scholarship.
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'I realised: 'Oh my gosh, I was pretty good at this'. I could just run over people, so I liked the physicality, for sure,' Flanagan, who is now a judge of the Superior Court in California, tells The Athletic.
As well as a fearsome scrum, the U.S. boasted a magical backline that featured center Candi Orsini, a stuntwoman with a high pain tolerance; winger Patty Jervey; and the versatile Jen Crawford. Over 100 All-Star players from the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest and Pacific Coast took part in an Inter-Territorial Tournament in February 1991. They were whittled down to the final 26 players by a panel of selectors.
As U.S. head coach, Cardiffian scrum enthusiast Kevin O'Brien was charged with moulding a team of strangers. The former prop was a teacher in a Boston school by day and also coached local side Beantown RFC. He had to wait for the end of term before travelling to Wales for the tournament, but proudly returned home with his wife and six-week-old daughter and watched his team win hearts and minds.
'They were ahead of the curve. They were semi-pro in their attitudes and what they expected from you, and if you didn't deliver, they let you know, in a good way. The nice thing about the whole group was that we had dialogue,' O'Brien tells The Athletic from his home in the northeastern state of Vermont.
'What I really enjoyed was the change. The women — not just the American women, but all the women who participated — changed a lot of attitudes.'
The U.S. team settled in at the Grand Hotel on Westgate Street in the city centre. A tall building with only one elevator, it had a disco on the second floor and was a short walk from the Cardiff Arms Park, which would host the semi-finals and final.
'It was like landing in rugby heaven,' U.S. assistant coach Chris Leach, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, tells The Athletic. 'Nobody else was near us, which also meant we could take players to pubs and talk about rugby with the local people. These are American women who had never experienced this, and they had a blast, an absolute blast.'
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Breckenridge and Flanagan were normally near the sharp end of the team's esprit de corps. The pair were roommates on the hotel's fifth floor and dished out PowerBars to anyone who asked. They had compiled 'The Know Your Eagles Handbook', a 39-page document filled with facts about team-mates.
Getting to know each other on the pitch was tough during their first game, a 7-0 win over the Netherlands. They could barely see one another in an icy Welsh downpour. With such a tight schedule, postponement was not an option. 'I've never seen rain like that in my life. It was like a curtain of rain,' Flanagan says.
'I was captain and Cathy Seabaugh, one of our flankers, was very, like, zero body fat. I remember in the middle of the game, she was clearly hypothermic, wandering around on the pitch,' No 8 Barbara Bond tells The Athletic from her California home.
Though an unpopular tactic with some of the players, O'Brien and Leach were determined to play everyone in the squad, and the rest time this created proved significant. Many made their tournament debut in the second game four days later, against the USSR.
The Russians brought trinkets and Matryoshka dolls to sell, with Orsini telling author Martyn Thomas in his book World in Their Hands that her mother, a journalist, had taken an interest in the Soviets' story. 'She thought it was incredible that they were selling goods in the stands and everything. She bought a police hat.'
They had also shipped caviar and crates of vodka into Wales to help fund their trip. The move initially attracted press attention and, latterly, that of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise officers.
Accompanying the Russian team were two smartly dressed translators, supposedly KGB agents. Following the 46-0 win in Cardiff, Flanagan – who has Ukrainian heritage – was basking in the glory of her international debut. She decided to put their linguistic skills to the test.
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'So Tam and I said: 'OK, let's go find the Russian locks, and then let's buy them a drink'. I don't speak Russian and they didn't speak English, so the interpreter would have to come over,' Flanagan recalls.
'So we called over the KGB guy and started having a friendly chat, but then we started asking him questions like: 'So, what do you think about America?'. And the interpreter guy's got a concerned look on his face. You could tell when someone's interpreting and they're not saying what exactly verbatim.
'We said: 'We're officially inviting you two locks to come to California'. And he was getting super-nervous — he shut it down.'
The U.S. faced their sternest test in the semi-finals. New Zealand, then known as the Gal Blacks, had been granted permission from Maori elders to perform the haka, the ceremonial war dance that features chanting, stamping and facial gestures such as pukana (bulging eyes) and whetero (sticking out the tongue).
'We decided not to face it. We just all huddled up together and stayed together tight as a unit,' says Bond, who was captain that day. 'We huddled up and just kept saying: 'Harder, stronger, faster'.'
'You could feel the energy amongst us. We were shoulder to shoulder, all 15 wrapped together. Nobody looked up,' says Flanagan. 'My informed perspective is that it was very culturally inappropriate. And I regret it.'
Leach admits to devising the tactic, not out of malice but more to shield his players. 'That was my instruction. I take the blame for that and to this day, I'm not comfortable with that. I am embarrassed. I said: 'Look, OK, just stay in the huddle. Don't disrespect them, but don't give them any eye contact',' Leach says.
The match, described as a 'dogfight' by Flanagan, was decided by the forwards, with Bond scoring a pushover try, the game's only score. 'That's the point when we just felt like nothing was going to stop us,' Breckenridge says.
The Americans were into the final, without having conceded a point. 'I think there was just this extreme competitiveness,' Breckenridge says. 'We weren't gonna give up points. You're gonna have to earn it. You're gonna have to fight for it and come through all 15 of us to get those points.'
With England beating France in the other semi-final, the U.S. were still unfancied in some quarters. Flanagan remembers walking into a bookmaker's shop in Cardiff to ask what the odds were for the game. 'It was 13-1 against us! People didn't understand how good we were,' she says.
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But at least the locals showed their appreciation for their adopted team. 'They loved us, especially before the final,' says Bond. 'Old men and little boys wanted our autographs. We walked to the stadium, and they're all: 'Go USA! Beat England!'.'
In front of almost 3,000 spectators, the U.S. initially struggled in that final and trailed 6-3 at half-time to a penalty try. But after the break, the Americans started to find some chinks in the English armour.
'They were slow to get around the pitch, moving around. And I'll tell you, Val Sullivan, the late Val Sullivan, our hooker, was just amazing,' Breckenridge adds.
Three second-half tries — two from flanker Claire Godwin and another from scrum-half Patty Connell — and two conversions by Chris Harju ensured a 19-6 victory, which they celebrated at the tournament banquet. 'That was such a crazy night. There was some libation in the cup,' says Breckenridge.
But for many, the moment was bittersweet. Cooper had to be back at work in London the next morning. 'I couldn't even get drunk! You may laugh. I got to bed at 2am, was up at 5am, drove back, dumped my bags, and I was at my desk at 9am,' Cooper says.
Bond and many of her team-mates endured a similar post-World Cup wake-up call: 'We had just had this amazing experience and we got home and it was like nothing had happened. There was no press. Nothing. It was sort of a reality check — back to life, back to work.'
'Here we are, on the top of the world. We really need to convince USA Rugby to invest in the women's program because we won't be able to sustain this advantage without more support. And sadly, that didn't happen,' Bond, who captained the team as they subsequently lost the 1994 and 1998 World Cup finals, adds.
Following the tournament, the contracts of O'Brien and Leach were not renewed.
The following year, the Eagles were invited to the White House, alongside their USWNT soccer counterparts, who also won a World Cup in 1991.
With President George Bush otherwise disposed with the San Diego Rotary Club, they were welcomed in Washington by Barbara Bush. But after paying their own way to Wales, and taking annual leave to play in the World Cup, many of the players were unable to attend.
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'To this day, it haunts me that we didn't have some rich benefactor that could pay everybody's airfares or something,' says Flanagan.
'Next year is our 35th anniversary of winning, so we're planning an appropriate level of celebration. Not all of us are here anymore. We've lost two of our team-mates — Kathy Flores and Val Sullivan passed away. It's hard to think that we're not all still here. I always thought we were invincible.
'Until you win it, until you have that opportunity, you just can't quite always express what it means in words.'
(Top photo of the U.S. team and the Welsh Guards Goat mascot before the final: Stu Forster/)
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