Ellie Kildunne (Part Two)
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How did Ellie’s early rugby career lead to her professional contract?
Welcome to part two of Walking the Dog with the wonderful World Cup winning England rugby star Ellie Kildun and her dog Otis. Really hope you enjoy part two of our walk and do give us a like and a follow so you can catch us every week. Here's Ellie and Otis and Ray Ray. But it's interesting because the the Union League thing You know, it's codes, isn't it? It's called those it's codes. And you chose union. You ha it's interesting to me 'cause this was a revelation reading your book, which I should say I loved, by the way, I should tell you again. And 'cause it was so interesting to me, all this Stuff that I was unaware of that actually you also have um sevens and fifteens and then if you want to play sevens
you can enter the Olympics 'cause that's at the Olympics, but if you're playing fifteens, which you'd elected to do, that's what you were doing, you then can't enter the Olympics unless you go back to sevens. Yeah. So you chose to do that, didn't you? So you could Was this uh was this because we sh we should go back to what happened. So basically you've started playing for England, you've done phenomenally well. This is with the fifteens. With the fifteens. And you played in New Zealand?
Yeah, so it's actually the it started before then, so when I was at Hartley I played the the year with the fifteen side and at the time it wasn't professional.
Yeah.
Um and then at the end of the year we got offered professional contracts. It was the first time it was going for a professional contracts.
So when you say it wasn't professional, you mean women weren't specifically w women rugby players weren't getting paid properly. Yeah. Exactly. So what were they how were they getting by? Working in bars and
Um everyone had usual jobs and you'd get paid for playing um like when once you'd played there was a fee that you'd get I can't even remember how. Two hundred quid or something. I can't remember how, honestly. It was probably a bit more than that, but I can't remember. And at this point where the men presumably the men are getting paid proper, so it was salary, yeah.
Why are women not getting paid? That's nuts.
No idea. I mean it was
They would say, Oh well we're not getting the attendances but then Well at the time we weren't.
We weren't getting the attendances. But then why are you not getting the attendances?
Because you're not paying them properly and because you're not growing up.
This is the argument because we're now professional in England but there's plenty of other countries that are not and it does really rely on you know, having the attendance and it's it is a bit of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, you don't really know. Um but that's for other unions to to work out and learn from the red roses. But essentially I I'd ha had been offered a fifteens contract, which was a salary and fully paid, or a sevens contract and I remember saying to the England coach at the time who had just, you know, been my coach that year, I wanna be the best player in the world. Mm. And he said, Okay, well, you know, you've got the World Cup and you you've got six fourteen. Um but then I remembered my Sainsbury School games and I thought now I want to do the Olympics 'cause that's first 'cause in my head I could do the Olympics and then go do the World Cup after.
So I signed the contract for the Sevens and trained with them for two years to to go to the Rio uh Tokyo Tokyo Olympics. See, I read your book Ellie. To go to the Tokyo Olympics. So, um we'd done that. I was injured pretty much for the whole thing. Um I was a very young player and I don't think my body could keep up with Yeah, but except going to Olympic village. Yeah, I mean I didn't go to that. Oh no you didn't go to that year injured yeah. So I well we got in got in I was injured the whole time. There was no like oh I'm injured now. Um and then um we went to our first uh G B camp, so we were coming together and you know the Tokyo Olympics was around the corner and then we all got made redundant because of COVID.
course so this coincided with COVID.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Ellie’s early rugby career lead to her professional contract?
0:00–6:38
2
What challenges did Ellie face when women’s rugby turned professional?
6:38–12:11
3
How did the COVID‑19 pandemic affect Ellie’s training, job security and mental health?
12:11–18:21
4
Why did Ellie become fixated on her diet and what impact did it have on her performance?
18:21–25:03
5
What emotions did Ellie experience lifting the Rugby World Cup trophy?
25:03–31:23
6
How did the invitation to become a Barbie doll shape Ellie’s view on body image?
31:23–36:27
7
Why does Ellie value honesty and being ‘comfortable in her own skin’?
36:27–42:18
8
What lessons does Ellie share about staying passionate and planning for life after sport?
42:18–46:23