Rooted in PWR: Ellie Kildunne

Ellie Kildunne’s career is already packed with enough honours to make her contemplate writing a book, but the England superstar views each milestone as a new beginning.

From making her Red Roses debut at 18 years old to being crowned World Rugby Player of the Year in 2024, there are plenty of moments that could signal she had ‘made it’.

But, instead, the 25-year-old prefers to see such achievements as just the start of a career that, with the culmination of a home World Cup still to come, is still only at its outset.

“Becoming World Player of the Year was pretty good, it’s definitely a highlight, but I feel like this is the start,” Kildunne explained.

“I felt like [my England debut] was the start, but that was probably just like the advertisement before the TV show or the film.

“Now I'm like, ‘OK, this is the start now.’ I'm sure there'll be other moments in my career that I think, ‘No, this is the start.’

“It's been a career already that's full of highlights and moments. I'm going to write a book about it sometime and I can't wait to read it back.”

Even if Kildunne feels she has only just finished setting the scene in her own narrative, she has certainly established her character as a world-class rugby player.

It was a journey that began in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where the full back played both league and union until she was 13 years old.

But when she had to look for a girls' team, opportunities were not forthcoming with Kildunne forced to play football for a year while she sought out a team to represent.

Eventually, through signing up to county trials and getting selected she found a club but it was still over an hour’s drive for her to get to training.

“I know it's very cliche to say that you wouldn't be where you are if it wasn't for your parents, but genuinely, I wouldn't because I wouldn't have been able to get to the training sessions,” said Kildunne.

“I wouldn't have been able to pursue rugby in that way. It probably would have been easier to go to the local football club at that point.

“They'd take me long, long drives up to Wharfedale, to West Park Leeds. They stuck with it as much as I did. It was difficult.

“But as soon as I got into that women's side and got into county, I could see a pathway.”

That pathway took her to the esteemed Hartpury College where she represented Gloucester Hartpury before making the move to Wasps Ladies in September 2020.

It sees her journey firmly rooted in Premiership Women’s Rugby where she currently represents Harlequins, helping them to make the play-offs last season.

But her England debut came before her biggest strides in the domestic game, signalling another starting point for Kildunne to launch herself from.

I just remember feeling like this is just the start.

“[The temptation is to think] I've made it and that's the end point. For me, it felt very much like this is the start,” she said.

“I was training and playing against the best players in the world and that's always what I had wanted to do and I made some big sacrifices to get to that point.

“But when I got my first cap, I did it alongside girls I'd grown up playing against. I felt grateful and also proud for my parents as well. For them to see their little girl, who was still very young, getting an England cap while I was doing my A-levels was probably very surreal for them.”

And it was certainly a springboard, having scored a try on her international debut in a 79-5 win over Canada, Kildunne has racked up 53 caps for the Red Roses.

Her performances for Quins as well as a Player of the Tournament-winning Six Nations campaign, in which she scored nine tries, before representing Team GB at the Paris 2024 Olympics led to the World Player of the Year accolade in November 2024.

And as she looks ahead to a home World Cup this summer, milestones both melancholy and magical come to mind.

“Getting to play in a World Cup was incredible. To play against New Zealand in New Zealand at sold-out Eden Park, incredible,” recalled Kildunne.

“That comes along with probably the biggest heartbreak in rugby that I've had as well. But now I'm on the other side of it, I think it's the best thing that's happened in my sporting career to lose a game like that and feel that way.”

And with possible retribution on the horizon, there is nothing Kildunne relishes more than playing in front of a sold-out crowd just a stone’s throw from her familiar abode at The Stoop.

“When we played France following the World Cup at Twickenham we'd never sold that many tickets ever before,” she said.

“To see the amount of people on the streets three hours before the game, it was honestly a sea of people. None of us could believe it. None of us.

“Then singing the anthem and actually not being able to hear the person next to me and hearing the crowd came with that as well.

“Even to this day, it still stands out as, ‘Wow, we're really on to something here.’ [It was a] very, very special moment.”

With the Allianz Stadium, Twickenham sold-out for the Women’s Rugby World Cup final, Kildunne will hope to embrace another moment just like that all over again.

And with her ‘cowboy mentality’ to boot, an attitude first forged in New Zealand, there is no doubt she will be savouring every moment of such a momentous summer for women’s rugby.

“It started off with a celebration and then a group chat whilst we were in New Zealand,” explained Kildunne.

“[But the mentality] for me, it's like forget the haters, forget any opinion. Do something that makes you happy and do it for the laughs.

“Do it for the what ifs, because you're not going to know unless you try it and you'll make a memory from it. If a cowboy can do it, anyone can do it.”

That attitude means the Quins player is setting no limits on what England can achieve this summer as they set about trying to attain nothing short of a transformation of rugby in the country.

And as Kildunne sets about writing the next chapter in the book of her career, she is aiming to break the boundaries of the imagination with the Red Roses’ next steps.

“I don't want to know what's going to come from this,” she said. “I want it to be bigger than what you can even imagine and we've got the ability and the opportunity to do so.

“To play on home soil, we've got the ability to inspire so many more people by showcasing what we do in one of the best competitions in the world.

“It's a really good opportunity to change lives for everyone that's involved in women's sport and to take women's rugby beyond the imagination.”