Thurrock RFC

Beneath the pylons, on a sun-burnt field, with the dull drone of the A13 in the distance, you’ll find a side that has long threatened the women’s rugby elite. Dominating the second tier, and with a travelling support, Thurrock would give every top side a scare. If only they got the chance.

They’ve heard what other clubs say about them. “Don’t play for Thurrock. You’ll hate it there.”

There are certainly far more picturesque places to play rugby. On the approach to Thurrock T-Birds’ home ground, Oakfield, you pass three high-rise council blocks. Behind one set of posts is a set of temporary classrooms, and the main part of the school adjoins Thurrock’s clubhouse. 

The pitches are on the edge of Grays, a town in the Essex Borough of Thurrock which has often been much maligned by the media. 

Beyond those pitches is the A13 – a 42-mile road that runs from east London to Southend and was immortalised by Billy Bragg’s song A13 Trunk Road to The Sea – the Bard of Barking’s take on Nat King Cole’s (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.

It starts down in Wapping
There ain’t no stopping
By-pass Barking and straight through Dagenham
Down to Grays Thurrock
And rather near Basildon
Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-On-Sea
Chalkwell, Prittlewell
Southend’s the end

It’s not exactly Amarillo, Oklahoma City or Flagstaff, Arizona.

But it’s the road that opposition teams will take on the way to Oakfield, and it’s the last stretch of that journey that sets the tone for what those teams will face when they come up against the T-Birds. “Coming down the long driveway, seeing the council flats,” says Emily Scott, an England international, “well that’s who we are and we don’t shy away from it.” 

Speak to other teams, ask them what it’s like to play away at Thurrock and the responses will be a mixture of grudging respect, painful memories (literally) or both, with a few expletives thrown in for good measure.

What helps to induce this sense of ‘Fear and Loathing in Essex’ from other teams is a reputation forged by the T-Birds through the late 90s and noughties and which has become the team’s DNA, if you will.

“We have a reputation, that we are the meanest team,” explains Sam Wilmott, the new T-Birds captain. “Some people have even called us a bitchy team. 

“Some players won’t join because of the names we’ve been given by other teams and what they get told.

“So, when we play, the opposition builds their guard up, but we just break it down. Yeah, maybe they are a bit scared of us and they know what we can bring to the table.

“A lot of people talk about former T-Birds players and those ex-players will join us on our socials. They built that reputation and whoever joins the club maintains it. And I think that kind of helps us, that people have this idea we’re not an easy team to play against. And we respect those former players for it.”

The other reason Thurrock gets dissed is probably that they have dominated their league, Championship South, for so long. “There is so much chat about Thurrock this, Thurrock that, from people who have never been here,” says Emily, now head coach of the T-Birds. “A lot of what gets said is based on what happened in the past. And when you speak to other players and ask them ‘when did you last play against Thurrock?’ they will say, ‘oh, twelve years ago’. 

“Also, it’s worth looking at the number of England players this club has produced.”

Last season the T-Birds won the league title for the sixth time in eight years. Given they’re in the top division beneath the ringfenced Allianz Premier 15s, it’s an impressive achievement. It’s all the more remarkable when you consider that Essex isn’t a hotbed of rugby. 

Yet, if you live in the east of England, play rugby and harbour aspirations of having a career in the women’s game, then Thurrock T-Birds is the team you need. 

The current squad features a number of players who demonstrate their devotion to the cause by spending hours on the road getting to and from training sessions.

They include No.8 Sarah Dyche, a GP who travels from Norwich to Thurrock, which equates to a five-hour round trip. On the night we visit, her commitment is rewarded by having to limp home early after pulling her hamstring. 

But it’s just one example of what makes this club different and why the T-Birds are the only Essex team to have played at the highest level in men’s or women’s.

The catalyst for rugby taking off in this town, firstly with the men’s side, and latterly with the T-Birds, was a group of Welshmen who arrived in Essex during the 1960s and 70s. They were university educated, didn’t want to work down the mines, and when the local authority needed to recruit teachers, they left the Valleys and moved to the Thames Estuary.

Naturally, they all played rugby and were encouraged to join their local club. The standard of playing and coaching immediately improved beyond recognition.

In the 1980s Thurrock became known as the Cup Kings of Essex, appearing in ten county finals and five Eastern Counties finals. 

And then in 1991, they famously beat London Irish 16-10 in the Pilkington Cup prompting the Sunday Telegraph to write: 

‘The uniquely Irish capacity for humour in the wake of a sporting debacle took rather longer to emerge at Oakfield on Saturday. 

Several tinctures had passed the lips of a committeeman in a green tie before he ventured, with a twinkle in his eye: “Thank God we’re only playing Orrell next week!”.’

The wives and girlfriends who would dutifully watch their partners every weekend eventually decided they too should have a piece of the action. So, they got together, started their own team and the T-Birds were founded in 1996.

The first coach was Gavin Scott (Emily’s father) and, “they actually turned out to be rather good,” says club chairman Andy Stanford.

So good, in fact, that the best players from other clubs in the local area wanted to join the T-Birds.

But the team also quickly acquired a reputation for being the toughest in whichever league they played. “Yeah, they were brutal actually,” says Andy, shaking his head as he recalls one game. “We would put up a men’s team against a ladies’ team and the men would get stuffed.”

The ladies became this tight-knit group that was willing to go further and harder than the opposition to win matches and that mentality has been passed on from team to team, season to season. “There are some places we go to and psychologically we’ve won as soon as we get off the team bus,” says T-Birds coach Andy Yarrow. “They are worried about the physicality and our tempo.

“But there’s so much more to it than stepping on a pitch and playing rugby. These players will do whatever it takes to win, but also for their team-mates in any way, shape or form. It’s that culture, that sort of cult mentality that really makes people from an outside point of view, think, ‘ooh, it’s Thurrock’. That has its pros and cons because we don’t want players to think they can’t play for us.

“Whenever I talk to somebody that has just joined us, I tell them that ‘you won’t have a better matchday experience than playing at home’. When the team comes out, the music is playing (they run out to Sandstorm by Darude) and that crowd is right behind you, it makes a big difference. 

“And from that crowd of spectators, I’d say around fifty of them follow us around the country, to all our away games. That is something that you don’t see enough of in the women’s game. I hope as the game grows, we see more of it at a grassroots level.”

Thurrock is also very much a community club. There is only one full-time employee (the bar manager, obviously) and around 150 volunteers. Those Welshmen who kick-started the club’s run of success are now a group of septuagenarian groundsmen.

But also what sets this club apart from the rest, quite literally, is its location. Thurrock could be viewed as the outsiders of women’s rugby. The nearest club in Championship South is twenty miles away in Blackheath. “It’s a lot more mixed now,” explains Andy, on the topic of employment, “but traditionally this is a working class town. People worked in factories, at the docks at Tilbury. If you walk along the river a lot of it is flats now, but back in the day there were industrial units and piers where they unloaded ships. You can still see the quays where they loaded cement for export.  You also had a belt of very nice houses where the business owners lived.”

The area has also had to endure a fair amount of negative press over the years. Back in 2012, a government wellbeing survey revealed that Thurrock had recorded the lowest levels of life satisfaction of any place in the UK.

Journalists were dispatched to Grays town centre to gather vox pops on what it was like to live there. A report in The Guardian included this gem:

‘Mick Dickinson, says he considers the government’s wellbeing project – a scheme designed to measure national progress more effectively than GDP – a waste of time and money, or, as he says, “a crock of shit”.’

There are still pockets of deprivation in Grays, but the town has also seen several housing developments spring up to cater for a market that works in London (it’s a forty-minute journey to Fenchurch St) but can’t afford to live there.

But reputations and biases are often hard to shrug off, especially if you’re from this part of the world. 

Wherever you go in the country, if you tell somebody you’re from Essex, you will always get a reaction. You don’t get that when you say you’re from Hampshire or Surrey. ‘You’re from Buckinghamshire? Okay, then…’ ‘Middlesex? Does that still exist?’

There was certainly a sense of ‘us and them’ when, after being relegated following one season in the Premiership in 2012/13, the club won the Championship and were denied the chance to return to the top flight.

Saracens and Richmond were accused of shutting out Thurrock. At the time, Thurrock director of rugby Dean White said: “It’s known that several of the top clubs feel that if the Premier League goes up from eight to ten because we are promoted then some of their players will come down here and play for Thurrock.”

It was a team that included Emily, and Rachael Burford, who also played for England. As that side climbed up the rugby ladder towards the Premiership, there was a point when the T-Birds could probably lay claim to being the best-supported side in English women’s rugby.

“We would see around 350-400 spectators and that was a big attraction for girls to come and play here,” says Andy Stanford. “We would go to away games and there would be more of our supporters than home fans. 

“And if you get a lot of supporters, they will spend money on beers and that allows you to pay the players’ expenses or travel costs.

“Girls would come here from well-known clubs and think ‘oh my god’. 

“It was also attractive rugby to watch,” continues Andy. “One of the issues we now have with the ladies’ games is that they are played on Sundays. Saturday is ideal because you watch a game, have a beer or two and not have to worry about work the following morning.”

 All the while the teams continued to play hard but also knew how to party. “The memories that stick with me going back to the clubhouse and the bar staff keeping the bar open to whatever time we wanted and just having a wild party,” says Emily. “A bunch of girls having a good time. That’s what comes to mind in when I think of Thurrock.”

The T-Birds enter this season as the team to beat in Championship South. “For many years now, Thurrock have been the benchmark for the women’s game outside of the Premiership,” says coach Andy.

Next season the Premier 15s will be expanded and Thurrock will submit an application to join. Setting aside what happens on the pitch, Andy Stanford says the club has most of the facilities required to host Premier 15s rugby. “Although the Premier 15s is steadily becoming a mirror image of the men’s game. The last time around I felt our application was pretty strong,” he says. “We’ve got the pitches, we’ve got changing rooms that are up to RFU spec, we’ve got car parking. The one thing we would need is room to do drug testing but we have the space to do that.

“But (playing in the Premier 15s) is a big financial burden unless you get a good sponsor. Any money you receive from the RFU (i.e. through TV or commercial deals) needs to be match-funded.”

The hope or expectation would be that the increased exposure women’s rugby is receiving on TV and online would help to attract those sponsors.

Although he cites what happened to DMP Sharks as an example of the problems that teams can get into [see our feature page 34], Andy would obviously relish the chance to see just how good this current T-Birds squad is, up against the likes of Saracens or Harlequins. “Yesterday afternoon I sat on a Microsoft Teams meeting with the RFU, which was to do with the opening (for a new team) at the end of this season of the Premier 15s,” he says. “There are a lot of players in our squad who are of Premier standard. I’m not going to say we would top the table but we could definitely be competitive.

“It is the most frustrating thing in the world because those girls don’t get a chance to shine. There are players in the past who have spoken to (England coach) Simon Middleton and he said, ‘you need to leave Thurrock to play for England’ and some have turned round and said, ‘I play for Thurrock’. That is fantastic, really.

“Don’t get me wrong,” adds Andy, “we would never stand in the way of a player wanting to move.”

But while the club remains in the Championship, this season will see the team go in a new direction. “We used to sit down with the girls every year, have a player meeting, and would ask what they wanted from the season. Every year you hear the same, ‘we want to win the league’. It was always success, success, success.

“We definitely still want to win,” he says. “But we’re trying to go with a different vision this year. 

“We’re working hard to grow the squad, bringing younger girls through in our development team as well. So that’s our vision for the season. 

“I’d be lying if I told you that we don’t want to win the league because we want to prove ourselves year in and year out,” he says. “While we’re not in the Premiership, when we win the league every year, why don’t we get that opportunity? We have a vision of creating a prestigious development programme for all our players. And that’s underpinned by our values of ‘heart, passion and belief’. And we really sort of try to drive that in every aspect of what we do. 

“To a rugby fan, you’d probably much rather watch Leicester Tigers v Saracens on the telly. But within the women’s game, Leicester was only formed in 2021 and Thurrock has been around since 1996. We just want a chance to show what we can do.

“Thurrock has a story and deserves that shot,” continues Andy. “I coach a men’s team on a Saturday. They are openly impressed by the women’s team and they asked who our first game is this season. I said ‘away at London Irish’ and they said ‘are you worried about that?’. We respect every team. But we won the league last year and we only lost one game, away at Bath in horrendous conditions. 

“To the wider rugby community, they hear the bigger names and think ‘ooh, you’re going to be in trouble there’ but actually we will compete.

“The big thing for us is that there is always that desire to become a better version of you.”

And it’s about being part of something bigger than yourself. Or, as captain Sam Willmott says, “We all want to win. We get each other wound up for a game and we build up that aggression.

“But also, everyone supports each other. It’s a team that is full of heart, full of love and full of soul.”  

Story by Ryan Herman

Pictures by Karen Yeomans

This extract was taken from issue 19 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.