Georgie Gulliver coaching Ivybridge RFC players on the touchline
Two Ivybridge RFC match shirts numbered 20 and 21 hanging on pegs in the changing room
Ivybridge RFC players in a changing room huddle with hands reaching into the centre
Ivybridge RFC players standing arm in arm on the pitch before the match
Ivybridge ball carrier being tackled from behind by an opponent in navy and red hoops
Ivybridge forwards driving a maul against opponents in navy and red hooped shirts
Ground level photograph of a tackled player lying on the grass as players run past in low sun
Muddy boots and a discarded green Ivybridge shirt on the changing room floor after the match
Wide view of the Ivybridge pitch in misty Devon light with spectators along the rail
Ivybridge player breaking through a tackle with the ball as a teammate supports

Ivybridge RFC Ladies:
Women's Rugby in South Devon

Nine hours in the car, and the light turned gold

Nine hours in the car for a stormy November weekend in South Devon, and I would not have missed it. Ivybridge RFC Ladies were ready. A women's team shaped by grit, by love of the game, and by the rare leadership of a coaching duo who genuinely get it. Georgie and Ben Gulliver, partners in life and in rugby, stepped in when another club turned its back on its women's side. What they have built at Ivybridge is more than a team. It is a community, a comeback, and a demonstration of what happens when women are supported to play.

I knew Georgie from her playing days with Saracens and England, 37 caps at scrum-half. On a touchline in Devon she was carrying more than leadership: she was pregnant with twins at the time, and had not told anyone yet. That quiet resilience, and the humility that goes with it, is what makes the story work. Ben's own playing career ran the better part of twenty years, Saracens and the Cornish Pirates among the clubs, and the two of them coach the side together.

The shoot was for Rugby Journal, which means the pictures had to hold a feature rather than fill a gallery. So I worked the whole day instead of the eighty minutes: the changing room before anyone had their boots on, the shirts hanging on their pegs, the huddle, the match, and the floor afterwards. The frame I keep coming back to has no players in it at all, just two match shirts on a cold wall. It tells you more about a club than the tackle does.

Ivybridge was bathed in light as the team took the pitch, cheered on by family, friends and future players watching from the rail. What I look for in sport is not only the action. It is emotion, connection, the story beneath the surface. That is where my camera lives.

There is more club rugby in the Thurrock T-Birds photo story, also made for Rugby Journal, and at East London RFC, with the rest in the sports portfolio. If you are commissioning photography of a women's team or a club season, here is how commissions work.