As with so many great British sporting ideas, the plans for the Women’s Varsity Match were first made during a late night drinking session at a pub. Oxford judo Blue Heather Bunting (later Lawrence) was a rugby fan who wanted to get a team going at the university. A post-grad student at St Hugh’s College, she had joined the Oxford Old Boys club to try to get a game. When she met Cambridge undergrad Sophia Pegers (later Marchandani) in a bar during the summer of 1988 – she had been press-ganged into driving a cricket team there for a match – they found a mutual passion, rugby. A challenge was laid down, and accepted, and two sports-mad students went back to their colleges to prepare for battle. The rest, as they say, is history!
The first Women’s Varsity Match was played at Iffley Road on Thursday, 10 March, 1988. Oxford borrowed the Greyhounds kit, Cambridge weren’t allowed to wear Light Blue and actually turned out in red and blue. Victory went to the visitors, 8-6, with their captain, one Sophia Pegers, grabbing the decisive try.
Fast forward 30 years to today’s fixture and the contrast is amazing. The two women’s team are fully integrated into the long-established rugby clubs at their respective institutions, the match is played at arguably the most famous rugby ground in the world and there are thousands watching, rather than the handful of die-hards who witnessed the first fixture.
But the past hasn’t been forgotten. The names of those two great pioneers, the original captains Bunting and Pegers, live on in the award for the player of the match. Joining in the 30th anniversary today will be many of the players who graced earlier battles and the players from both sides are ready to put on a great show to pay homage to them.
“We have come an incredibly long way in 30 years. I don’t think any of the girls who played in the first Varsity match – and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of them – could ever have imagined playing at Twickenham, the home of English rugby,” said the Cambridge captain, Kate Marks.
“The Varsity match is more than just a game to us, it represents the journey we’ve made in sport across the board and also as women within sport, within rugby. It’s incredibly important we keep pushing on and fighting for equality as a sports team.
“That said, I think we are now viewed equally to the men, which is a huge step forward. It’s relatively new and when the two clubs amalgamated it was definitely a big thing. The 30th anniversary of the Women’s Varsity Match is huge for all of us today.”
After that inaugural success, Cambridge had to wait almost a decade before winning again as Oxford put together a record run of eight successive victories. That is a record that even exceeds the six in a row posted by their male counterparts between 2010- 2015. Lizzie Cribb won six of her record seven games for Oxford between 1993-99, while Jess Gurney enjoyed three wins in her seven appearances in Light Blue between 2012-17.
One of the players who featured in Dark Blue in that run of wins was Sue Day. She played at centre in the 1995 triumph and two years later won the first of her 59 caps for England. Her test career ended after three World Cups and a record 61 tries. She also captained her country to a Grand Slam. Her links with rugby continued long after that. She became the first female President of the Wasps FC in 146 years in 2013 and this year took up her post as chief financial officer at the RFU.
Day is not the only influential female rugby voice from Oxbridge at Twickenham. The current bursar at Homerton College, Cambridge, Deborah Griffin, has not only been on the RFU Council since 2010, but this year was voted as England’s first female representative on the World Rugby council. She will be here today in her capacity as secretary of the Cambridge University Rugby Football Union club.
There have been many great contests between the two teams down the years. The high for Oxford was their 62-0 triumph at home in 2000, while Cambridge exacted suitable revenge in the historic first meeting at Twickenham three years ago with an equally impressive 52-0 victory. Alice Middleton distinguished herself by scoring 27 points in that 2015 victory and duly carried off the inaugural Bunting-Pegers award. Having left Cambridge, she is now playing at Bristol Bears.
But perhaps the greatest achievement over the past 30 years, classic contests like the 3-0, against all odds victory by Catherine Wilcock’s Dark Blues here in 2016, has been the establishment of women’s rugby as a viable sporting offering across both universities. The boom in interest in women’s rugby across England – there are now more than 27,000 players at clubs the length and breadth of the country – has been mirrored at Oxford and Cambridge. The Varsity Match coaches are no longer having to teach raw rookies how to catch and pass, they are having to cull their squads before the big game as the standard continues to rise. Colleges across both campuses are playing more and more matches and, of course, the men’s and women’s clubs have amalgamated to help drive rugby forward both on and off the field.
There is still plenty of bar room chat about women’s rugby at Oxford and Cambridge 30 years on from that initial Bunting and Pegers conversation. But these days it is more about who will win at Twickenham or gain promotion in the BUCS Leagues, rather than whether or not the players will be able to train on the men’s ground or wear the same jerseys. Yes, they have come a long way!
Tickets for the 30th Anniversary of Women’s Varsity Match and 137th Men’s Varsity Match at Twickenham on Thursday, 6 December, are still available from £25 adults, £15 students and £10 juniors. Click here to buy online
