Deborah Griffin from student rugby player to first woman RFU President
The RFU Council’s recent AGM decisions saw Deborah Griffin appointed Junior Vice President from August 1st. This means she will become the RFU’s first female President in 2025 when England hosts the top women’s team from across the globe at the Rugby World Cup, with the final at Twickenham Stadium.
“I think it’s super that we have also achieved parity on the Board,” says Deborah who was the first elected female Board member in 2014. “With Auriol Stevens and Kirsty Marlor appointed, there will be six women and six men on the12-member Board.
“We have done really well in terms of appointments at the top but I’m aware there’s more to be done with Council and Constituent Bodies and clubs to ensure diversity in governance, not just for women, but in general. I am excited to be taking up the role of President but, as the first female, I have some trepidation because there is bound to be a lot of scrutiny. I want to be myself and bring a female perspective, but also want to honour the presidential role and represent the RFU encompassing all the clubs, players and volunteers.”
Playing other universities
Deborah started playing rugby at University College London in 1978 when studying for a BSc Economics degree.
“Rugby wasn’t a sport that I knew very well but with a group of girlfriends we challenged Kings College to a game of women’s rugby, having gone to watch the men play. If you didn’t take up the challenge your challengers took the points so, after some sessions almost entirely in an old gym, we played them. We had roped in girls from different sports like hockey and, when I came off the pitch, I thought the match was the best time I’d ever had. We started asking other universities to get a team together to play us.
“Then later, realising that from our women’s rugby team most of us had left UCL some time earlier and some had never been there, we decided to go to play at the club of our coach at the time, which was Finchley RFC. Five marriages came out of the two years we were there but in the end we decided to leave the club because the committee at the time refused us membership. The players welcomed it but the committee were, I think, nervous about becoming the first club to have female members, although they had been glad to have us helping out, making the teas and paying to play on their pitches.”
Having been one of the founder members of the Rugby Football Union for Women in 1983, at which time and it included Wales and Scotland as well as England, Deborah had helped organise a Great Britain v France match at Richmond FC’s Athletic Ground in 1986.
Joining Richmond
“Richmond were keen to have a women’s side, so we moved from Finchley to Richmond,” said Deborah, who continued to play at the club for seven years alongside others like Carol Isherwood, who captained England, Sue Butler, who captained Wales and Debbie Francis, who played for England in the first Rugby World Cup and later for Scotland when they created a women’s team.
Having qualified as a chartered accountant, Deborah worked initially in the hotel industry, then as a consultant in corporate finance, primarily in the hotel, travel and leisure industries. She joined Homerton College Cambridge as Bursar in 2012, retiring in September 2022.
With a daughter, Victoria, and a son, Laurence, who still plays for Richmond Renegades Sevens, she had to meet all the challenges of a busy working mother and “It was non-stop to be honest. I would literally be on the go from the moment I woke until late at night and holiday time or time off was devoted to rugby. I sometimes thought everyone talks of athletes needing recovery time but mums like me never had any!”
Integration with the RFU
Her rugby commitments saw her almost putting in time equivalent to a second job. She chaired the organisation of the first Women’s Rugby World Cup in Cardiff in 1991; was
RFUW Finance Officer and then Chair of the Board, and she also saw the RFUW to full integration with the RFU in 2012.
“Integration really had to happen, but it was really interesting,” says Deborah. “In most other countries the women’s game has grown up within the men’s set up whereas for some three decades we operated independently and had Sport England and UK Sport funding and were in control of our own destiny. But there is nothing like the power of the RFU, particularly for the community game, and we knew we would eventually have greater access to resources with integration.
“Bob Rogers wrote a paper for Council on the benefits of integration in 2005 but it didn’t go through until a Governance Review and the RFUW were given a position on Council in 2010, the RFUW Board nominating me. By that time, we were working very closely together. I was the first female Council member and later the first elected female Board member and I have always felt very welcome. I always knew, however, that it was important to be visible, to ask questions. As women’ and girls’ representative, it was important to give them a voice.”
Having been nine years on the RFU’s Audit Committee, Deborah is currently chair of the Women’s Performance Management Group, was women and girls representative on the RFU Council until 2018, and has since been the World Rugby representative. She also chairs World Rugby’s Audit and Risk Committee. In the 2011 Birthday Honours, she was awarded an OBE for services to women's rugby.
Emotional record attendance
She says that the day of the 58,498 world record attendance for a standalone women’s Test at the Red Roses’ Grand Slam winning Twickenham match against France, was “incredibly emotional.”
“I invited my parents who are both 86 and I found the day emotionally exhausting, knowing all the work, all the planning that had gone into it. There was a peak of 936,000 watching on TV. And the RFU’s aim is to fill the stadium for the Rugby World Cup 2025 final.”
If that aim is achieved, you can be sure Deborah Griffin will think back to 1978 and the journey she and the women’s and girls’ game has been on over many years since.
Welcoming guests to the President’s dining room, now graced by a painting depicting the women’s game thanks to a gift commissioned by RFU chair Tom Ilube, the first-ever female President will be proud to represent the entire sport and all those playing, volunteering, and watching rugby.
