Scrumqueens’ Young Player of 2014
The purpose of this award has always been to highlight up-and-coming players, but one feature of modern women’s rugby is that 23 – the age limit for this award – barely seems young anymore. A 23 year-old would be one of the oldest members of the new Australian sevens squad, and fairly senior in the Canadian and New Zealand squads as well. However, for the time being, this award will remain restricted to players who were 22 or under on 1st September 2013.
Published by John Birch, January 1st, 2015
4 minute read
38 players were nominated altogether from nine countries, not all of whom quite made the age limit (England’s Kat Merchant will be flattered to know that some people in Worcester believe her to be under 23).
Most of the nominees have already made a mark at international level, and it was no surprise to see that 11 of them were Australian - Taleena Simon, Charlotte Caslick, Emma Tonegato, Ellia Green, Alicia Quirk, Emilee Cherry, Dominique de Toit, Rachel Crothers, Brooke Walker, Laura Waldie, and Brooke Anderson. A daunting prospect, especially as several of them will still be young enough to be considered for this award by the time the Tokyo Olympics roll round.
Other highly talented players nominated by readers who are still under 20 include Canada’s Emily Belchos (19), Spain’s Teresa Bueso (17), and England’s Amy Cokayne (18). Watch out for all of them over the next year or two.
However, just one remarkable fact about the winner of our award this year is that she was older than most of the above players when she first started playing. Yet her lightning rise through the ranks means that she is now, while still only 21, able to command a near automatic place in both her national XVs and VIIs squads while being one of the reasons behind the rise of her club to possible national glory in 2015.
SHANNON IZARof Lille MRCV and France was a highly talented junior heptathlete who could have gone on to represent her country in athletics (she remains record holder for the javelin in her department, Tarn). However, growing up in Castres, her first love was always rugby, practising in the garden with her brother Yohan - despite her mother being opposed to her playing “such a hard sport”.
At the end of 2011 she started at university in Lille – and immediately joined the rugby club. By May 2012 she was a national university champion and weeks later pulling on her firstmalliot bleufor the French Universities team. In September she scored on her debut for Lille in the Top 10, which was quickly followed by selection to the national sevens squad in time for the 2013 Sevens World Cup, where she was France’s top scorer.
Early in 2013 she also made her XVs debut on France’s tour of Canada, and appeared in almost all of France’s games in both the Six Nations and World Cup this year. However, we may see little of her in a French fifteens shirt in 2015 as she will be a leading part of France’s sevens team in their late (or well-timed, depending on your point of view) charge for a place at the 2016 Olympics. She was certainly key to their semi-final placein Dubai- where France exceeded all expectations (even, one suspects, from the French themselves).
Fast, powerful, and hugely talented it is difficult to see how, given her astonishing rise through the ranks, she will fail to get to Rio with, given France’s equally rapid improvement, the real prospect of returning with a medal around her neck.
But in the meanwhile, congratulations toShannon Izar – Scrumqueens’ Young Player of 2014.