Claudia MacDonald: People assumed I was a boy because I had muscles
An England coach asked Claudia MacDonald, after her third cap, how it felt to play at Twickenham. Her response was that she hadn't, really, because she came on so late. Starting on the wing against France in 2023 was an occasion she could certainly count. On Saturday, she will be there from the off once again, for a grand-slam decider against the same opposition.
Every time MacDonald has taken to the Twickenham turf, her presence has been a little triumph. That she was there in 2018, when the Red Roses played Ireland after the men had beaten Australia, was remarkable because she had taken up rugby only three years previously, at Durham University. For the 2023 game against France — another grand-slam decider, in front of a crowd of 58,498 — she was not far removed from a career-threatening neck injury that kept her out of internationals for ten months before the previous year's World Cup.
This weekend will be her third cap since another neck injury left her afraid of leaving the house and, again, contemplating whether she would ever play again. Absent from Red Roses duty between November 2023 and March 2025, MacDonald has excelled on her restoration, scoring three tries against Italy and Scotland and retaining the No11 jersey for the final match of the championship.
'Sometimes you have to stop and reflect and look at the last year and a half and go, 'I've come such a long way,' ' MacDonald, 29, says. 'Mo [Natasha Hunt, the scrum half] is actually incredibly good at reminding me of that journey that I've been on, and just to relax and enjoy it and smile.'
Though MacDonald did not take up rugby until she was an undergraduate, she had been around the sport, spending part of her childhood in Dubai before attending St John's School in Leatherhead for sixth form. Her family watched men's internationals and she liked to imitate Jonny Wilkinson's kicking routine, and she and her brother, Alex, would play slow-motion rugby in the lounge to the tune of Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson.
One of the reasons she waited until she was 19 to have a proper go was because of her experiences of a girls' game nearby while she was watching her brothers play.
'There weren't very many nice comments thrown at it,' she says. 'It was all, 'Oh, they're uncoordinated, they're unfit, they're rubbish at rugby'. Everyone being told they're gay and whatever else. That was something that I struggled with a little bit when I was younger: people assuming that I was gay or that I was a boy because I was muscular and sporty.
'I didn't want to necessarily step into that because then I thought, 'Oh, those same comments are going to be thrown at me'. But no, that wasn't the case at all. I've met some of the most girly people I've ever met in my entire life playing rugby. There's a whole range of people playing. I think that's just amazing.'
When MacDonald arrived at Durham in 2015, she was a netball player. Her college, Josephine Butler, had a mixed rugby team with the nearby Van Mildert and she coyly decided to turn up to training one evening. She looked far from a novice and the next day she went to a university session. It was not long before she was playing for Darlington Mowden Park and, upon graduation, for Wasps and England, as a professional when 15s contracts returned in January 2019.
MacDonald is unequivocally a wing now, but she has oscillated between the flanks and scrum half (the RFU still lists her as a No9). Scott Bemand, the former England attack coach who is now Ireland's head coach, encouraged her to switch from the back three, and it was there that her international career began.
At the 2022 World Cup, MacDonald started out wide in the semi-final and had a hand in the try of the tournament. Receiving the ball on her tryline, she jinked through physios and Canadian defenders, hurled a pass out to Abby Dow and watched her fellow wing run in from 70 metres.
Come the final, MacDonald was on the bench and played the last half-hour of the gutting defeat by New Zealand at scrum half. 'I can't really remember much of the game, but I'd like to hope I did an all right job,' she says.
MacDonald was back on the wing for the following Six Nations, but missed last year's championship because of the neck injury, meaning she was pitch-side on BBC duty for the Twickenham fixture against Ireland, analysing not only her team-mates, but also Cliodhna Moloney, her fiancée on the opposition bench.
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Though this year's crowd is not expected to reach the levels of the past two editions, it will be another significant occasion for the Red Roses. Whether as replacement scrum half, pundit or first-choice wing, MacDonald's presence is testament to her ability and resilience.
'That France game two years ago was just one of the most surreal moments I've ever experienced in rugby,' she says. 'I'd certainly never experienced that coach journey, which is what really sticks out in my head. We left the Lensbury [hotel in Teddington] and it took us so much longer to get to Twickenham than we ever anticipated.
'We were all — well, I certainly was anyway — glued up to the window because I couldn't believe the number of people that were out on the streets, the people that were in the pubs and as they saw us come past, they all came out on to the streets cheering us on.'
England v France
Women's Six Nations
Twickenham
Saturday, 4.45pm
TV BBC2
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