Red Roses at Twickenham:
England v Ireland, Six Nations
Eighty-eight points, fifty thousand people, one afternoon
On 20 April 2024, England met Ireland at Twickenham in the Women's Six Nations and won 88-10, a record score in front of nearly 50,000 people. I photographed it from pitchside. One frame from that afternoon was shortlisted for Rugby Photographer of the Year.
A Test match is not a shoot you can direct. You are given a position, you stay in it, and the only things left to control are anticipation and lens choice. So I work the try line for the score and stay wide for what comes after it, because the frame that lasts is usually the half second past the moment rather than the moment itself. The black and white picture here is a try with the scoreboard reading 84-10 behind the play. The same try without the scoreboard is just a try. With it, it is a record being set.
Some of these pictures are not of the rugby at all. A girl in an England shirt with a rose painted on her cheek, watching from the stand, is as much of the afternoon as the try was. Women's rugby is still a sport where the crowd is part of what is changing, which is something I have written about, and a set of pictures that only shows the players misses half of it.
The Women's Rugby World Cup came to England the following year and I photographed that too. There is more women's rugby across the sports portfolio, including Saracens Women at dawn, and if you are commissioning coverage of a Test match or a full tournament, here is how commissions work.