Jarrell-Searcy: 'Once you’ve started having the type of line breaks...you can’t really stay in the second row'

No one was as surprised as Erica Jarrell-Searcy when she burst through the Red Roses defensive line to score a try in the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup opener.

For one simple reason. She had never done that before.

“I was like, I guess I’ll just try and do that every game,” Jarrell-Searcy told RugbyPass.

At the end of her Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign with the USA Women’s Eagles, the 26-year-old was regarded as her nation’s top performer. A try scorer in all three of her outings in the pool stages, she was keen to replicate her form in the new Premiership Women’s Rugby season for Sale Sharks.

She even argued with her club’s strength and conditioning coaches to let her back on the pitch sooner. Even if her lungs burned just thinking about the amount of running her teammates in the North West were doing.

Even if that running was a lot to think about, it was the perfect follow up to a Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign which Jarrell-Searcy came out of the fittest she ever has been.

“I don’t want to expose the secret methods of Charles Dudley (the USA’s Head of Athletic Performance),” she laughed. “I will say there was this one session called a 1200 medley.

“Basically you run the 1200 and it’s a rolling 10 minute clock and when the clock strikes 10, you run another 1200 metre distance but with slightly fewer turns so it is easier to make the time under fatigue.

“Then on the next rolling 10 you do another 1200 that’s just pitch laps, so there are no turns. It’s horrible. I trusted him blindly. I did all the crazy stuff that he came up with. He was just immediately redefining the ceiling of our expectations.

“As rugby players, normally the farthest we ever have to run at one time is 1200, so he comes in and is like, what if you do that three times?

“He did that with our weight numbers. He came in and said we should be benching 1.2 times your body weight. Everyone gasped. You know what? The next six week block of gymming, people who had just been at one weight for so long jumped.”

Against Leicester Tigers in Sale’s season opener Jarrell-Searcy managed a similar sort of break to the one that the world saw at the Stadium of Light.

Looking back it was the perfect stage to unlock that ability to beat defenders with speed and power.

Those images of the 26-year-old dancing around defenders with her Viking braids will live long in the memories of many. They certainly caught the eyes of her coaches.

“I think once you’ve started having the type of line breaks that I’ve just randomly had, you can’t really stay in the second row,” Jarrell-Searcy said.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by CBS Sports (@cbssports)

Against Trailfinders Women and Gloucester Hartpury, the Harvard University graduate has lined up at No.8. That shift to the back-row in some ways is a throwback to her early days in rugby.

A novice to the game when she took it up in university, Jarrell-Searcy moved around the forward pack during her time in Massachusetts. Some confusion about the differences between props in 15s and sevens landed her in the front-row in Ivy League competition.

Her natural height and stature actually made her a dominant force. But to take her international career further, after several flirtations with the Test arena, a move had to be made.

After she had travelled to New Zealand for the 2021 Women’s Rugby World Cup as front-row cover, she began to play more regularly in the second row for her club side, Beantown RFC, and earned a move to Sale Sharks in 2024.

“I came back and within the first day, the coaches were making these little jokes about (playing at) eight,” Jarrell-Searcy said. “After four or five comments from a couple of the coaches, I went up to Luke Stratford and I was like; you guys are really funny, I’ll do anything, I just want to be on the pitch.

“I was like, Strats you’re gonna be amazed at how much coaching I will need. If you want me to play in the back-row, you’re not even going to have imagined the type of stuff I will come up with to do wrong or ask about. I have played more at prop than I ever have at lock.

“It’s been really fun. On the back end of the World Cup, I had this confidence and I felt really settled into the second row and the role that the USA wanted from me. To come home was always going to be a change, but to fully change my role and be playing a different position it has been super invigorating.

“I’m just excited to keep exploring all these different things, and if they want to throw me back in the row sometimes, I know what I am doing there. For now, we’re testing new waters.”

Coming into the 2025/26 PWR season, Jarrell-Searcy knew that Sale’s mindset had shifted. A significant offseason saw Tom Hudson arrive as head coach from Leicester Tigers, and brought Luke Stratford and Charlie Beckett along for the ride.

Throw in a couple of Red Roses in the form of Amy Cokayne and Holly Aitchison and a handful of Scotland internationals, on paper Sale’s squad looked a far different prospect.

In the mind of Jarrell-Searcy, who has been a part of the furniture since her January 2024 arrival in Greater Manchester, she has seen the same level of commitment from the clubs owners Simon and Michelle Orange – who have doubled down on their commitment to professional women’s rugby having a home in the north of England.

But it is also an extremely exciting time. In their season opener against Leicester, Sharks played in front of a sold-out Morson Stadium. Played in the shadow of the best-attended Women’s Rugby World Cup of all time, it was the perfect start to the new league season and the roar for Jarrell-Searcy’s now trademarked bursts felt as loud as a late August night in Sunderland.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Premiership Women’s Rugby (@thepwr)

To start the season Sharks have picked up eight points from a possible 20. Their Round 1 bonus point win over Tigers have been followed up with defeats to Loughborough Lightning, Trailfinders Women and Gloucester Hartpury.

Exeter Chiefs’ visit to Cheshire this Saturday will likely be a testing one. Steve Salvin’s side have been in resplendent form and will surely want to get another five points under their belt after a week off.

A try scorer in the away loss to the three-time champions most recently, Jarrell-Searcy is anything but disheartened about where Sale find themselves. Still with so much room for growth and development as a group that has never been more talented, the possibilities seem endless.

“I feel quite positive,” Jarrell-Searcy said. “Off the back of Ealing, that might not be a unanimous feeling, I might have a broader scope on this type of thing, the fact that we haven’t yet had a zero points weekend on the table, that was all I could have dreamt of last year for us.

“To be getting those hit-ups where you’re actually scoring and that’s the whole point of playing, to score. We’ve been doing that and I don’t know if it is fully resonating with people how much of an improvement that is, in what is a relatively short turnaround. Especially where every other team in the league has gotten as better as they possibly could in the time we’ve had off.

“To have closed that gap, even marginally, really inspires me. I think that means we’re doing a lot of things right.”