Vodafone UK News speaks to Josie Symonds, Scotland Women’s Head of Physical Performance, ahead of International Women’s Day – and a watershed year for the women’s game.
2024 was a successful year for Scotland Women’s rugby team, having qualified for the upcoming 2025 Rugby World Cup, which will be played in England across August and September.
With the aforementioned World Cup being held in England, and another Six Nations beforehand, there is little time to look back fondly on past achievements, however. In fact, for many involved in the game, 2025 is set to mark the true watershed moment for women’s rugby.
That’s certainly the view at Vodafone UK, which became a Principal Partner of Scottish Rugby’s Women’s Pathway (as well as the Men’s teams) in 2024, building on an underlying commitment to help grow the game at all levels, and across all four nations of the UK.
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Plan, perform, progress
Fortunately for Scotland Women’s Head of Physical Performance, Josie Symonds, looking ahead is something that comes naturally.
“We’re constantly working towards the next thing,” says Symonds, “with a lot of programming and planning, setting out the intention and schedule for the next campaign, and how that will fit from a physical performance perspective.”
Symonds may only be a year or so into the role, but she is no stranger to the sport. Having played the game extensively, strength and conditioning (S&C) coaching roles for Worcester Warriors, and then Exeter Chiefs, soon followed.
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Though she initially started working with the men’s teams at Worcester, progressing through the ranks from academy to seniors, it was a shift to the women’s game that set her up for her current national team job.
“Moving to the women’s programme at Worcester was probably a bit of a punt at the time,” admits Symonds, “but I absolutely loved it. It was probably the best year of my life in terms of my professional career.”
That might change in 2025 of course, given the potential opportunities that lay ahead for this Scotland Women’s team – many of which will be directly affected by Symonds and her staff.
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Closing the gap
That’s despite players spending around seven months of the year with their respective club teams – a situation that keeps national team coaches busier than you might imagine, as Symonds explains:
“We keep really close tabs on them, by building relationships with staff and players at their clubs. Having a collaborative working process across these systems helps make sure they’re physically prepared to come in and tolerate the demands of an international camp.
“These preparations require a very individualised approach, varying from player to player and club to club, and differ significantly from what’s required for the men’s team.
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“This is in part due to the wider variance of resources across the women’s game but also because the youth players go through very different journeys,” Symonds continues. “Boys academies typically start as young as 12-14, while female players tend to start at 18-19. From an S&C perspective, this means you can have 18-year-old men’s players that can squat twice their body weight, whereas you’re typically teaching younger female athletes to lift a barbell for the first time.”
This disparity is something that Vodafone and The Good, The Scaz and The Rugby’s (GSR) EmpowHER initiative aims to address, by bridging the gap between university rugby and the elite women’s game. Launched in 2023, Vodafone’s EmpowHER programme provides selected university clubs with elite player mentoring and exclusive access to the Vodafone PLAYER.Connect platform.
The programme has already seen both Nicole Flynn and Cieron Bell selected for Scotland’s 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations squad, having been part of the project at The University of Edinburgh. Following this success, Vodafone and GSR have expanded EmpowHER to include all seven BUCS Women’s Super Rugby teams, reaching more than 200 aspiring female rugby players across the UK.
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A level playing field
Though it’s not just the playing side where progress is still needed, as Symonds suggests:
“S&C is such a male-dominated field that I found it quite tricky to navigate initially. With a lot of male coaches, it’s typically assumed that they know what they’re doing, particularly if they look the part.
“As a female coach, however, you definitely have to prove yourself. I think anyone who wants to pursue a career as a female coach needs to have perseverance, because they’ll always be times where you have to prove your worth, value or ability.”
The theme for International Women’s Day 2025 – ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.’ – hits right at the heart of this gender gap, with the United Nations calling on actions that will help protect future generations from some of today’s inequalities.
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For Vodafone, longstanding support of women’s rugby helps contribute to this aim, through partnerships with: Wales Women; Scotland Women; Gloucester Hartpury Rugby and Hartpury University and Hartpury College WRFC; the Armed Forces Women’s Rugby Teams; and Celtic Challenge teams Gwalia Lightning and Brython Thunder.
For Symonds, meanwhile, these are actions that she and her colleagues are already taking every day:
“It’s great to support girls through their athletic development in terms of: how to be safe and effective in the gym; how to express themselves; how to get strong and powerful; and be really incredible versions of themselves from an athletic sense.
“I find supporting them such an exciting part of the journey.”
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