Liz Crake does not tend to save numbers in her phone and so when she was driving home from work and received a call from a number she didn’t recognise, she didn’t hesitate in answering. The Trailfinders player, who is a dentist outside of rugby, received life-changing news on the other end from Charlie Hayter, Rugby Football Union women’s performance manager.
He was calling to tell her she had been awarded a full-time contract, meaning she was a fully professional rugby player for the first time. It came as a surprise to the prop, who had no inkling that the coaches were going to give her a contract.
Crake is now a few months into full-time rugby and says she has imposter syndrome because she has not played a game for England since 2023.
“If I’m being honest I really struggle to feel proud of it at the minute,” the 29-year-old says. “I have to keep reminding myself like ‘it is actually mental, your entire job is just to play rugby’. But then I think because when you’re a kid and you dream of a rugby career, playing for England etc, you want that career where you are playing every week and you have X number of caps and you get player of the match. You dream about the best of the best situations.
“I know I will look back when I am a lot older and be really proud but I think for me, I got my two caps and then I was dropped out of the squad and not used again, I find that quite difficult to process. Until I have been in the squad for a longer period of time and really earned… I don’t know how to describe it.
“I’m not saying I didn’t earn it, I worked really hard to get into a position where I would be selected for England and obviously your opportunity is always going to come from someone being injured or retiring. I think because I was an injury replacement and then dropped, I don’t feel like I have earned it yet. I feel like there is more I want to be able to do and I want to reflect and be like ‘I was really good, I was class, I really deserved that’. I want to be able to be a bit more proud of it than I currently am.
“My partner, when we meet people, says ‘my girlfriend plays for England’ but I’m like ‘well kind of’. I get paid and have played for them but I am not currently in the squad so it kind of feels a bit tricky.”
Big shout out to @TrailfindersW's Liz Crake, who has today been awarded her ☝️st full-time Red Roses contract ✍️🌹
Great to have you with us, @sportytoothdoc 🤝 pic.twitter.com/IvQBgzrPyV
— Red Roses (@RedRosesRugby) June 3, 2024
While Crake has not played for England for a while, her rugby at club Trailfinders has done the talking for her to receive the contract. She moved to the club after Wasps went into administration, following coach Giselle Mather to the side.
Mather left the club just before the current Premiership Women’s Rugby season began. The players were told about her departure over a Zoom call but there were some nerves around the topic of the call before they were told.
With Mather not on the call it was reminiscent of how the players were told Wasps were heading for administration.
Crake adds: “A couple of us messaged our manager Jojo [Loxton], we had a lot of girls saying ‘the last time we had this kind of call announcement the club was going under so can you just reassure us that we have still got jobs’. The Zoom call was the next day and she was like ‘yes, don’t worry’.”
Barney Maddison has stepped up to the head coach role after being an assistant in recent seasons. The current campaign has a shortened schedule because of the 2025 Rugby World Cup and Crake says it means squad rotation is critical.
“You are going to need to, everyone can’t play 80 minutes every week or back-to-back. In some ways it will be quite positive in terms of squad depth and strength in depth. We have only had [a few] games so it hasn’t hit us just yet, how intense it is or it will be. At the minute everyone is still feeling pretty good, we’re still in the honeymoon phase of the league.”
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