Giselle Mather: 'It’s no longer weird to see a female coaching'

To celebrate International Women’s Day, RugbyPass are sharing a series of exclusive interviews with the six female head coaches on the HSBC SVNS Series, the next installment with Great Britain Women’s Sevens coach, Giselle Mather. Women currently make up 25% of head coaching roles across all 24 teams involved in the Series, with even fewer leading 15s teams, and all of their unique stories must be honoured.

Every aspect of Mather’s rugby career has seen her break down barriers.

As a player Mather was just the 35th Red Rose, but as a coach has seen the former fly-half achieve notoriety across the world.

The first female rugby coach to earn her Level 3 and 4 coaching badges from the RFU and the first women to hold a full-time coaching position with a Premiership Rugby club when she joined London Irish as an Academy Coach in 2008.

‘This Energy Never Stops’ – Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025

‘This Energy Never Stops’ – Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025

Now one of six female head coaches in HSBC SVNS, the GB Rugby Sevens head coach spoke to RugbyPass ahead of International Women’s Day about how coaching has changed over the course of her two-decade career.

“It’s more the norm now, but we’re nowhere near where it needs to be,” Mather said.

“It’s now no longer weird to see a female coaching rugby, football or cricket.

“There’s still this old ‘bring in a man’ [attitude] and it’s still happening everywhere. A guy comes straight off the field and goes into big jobs.

“All the female coaches, we’ve done all sorts before that. The girls coming off the field now have as much experience in the game as the boys. Especially in the female game.

“There are loads of men coaching in the women’s game who haven’t necessarily coached very much, but because they’ve played the game, they get the respect afforded to them.

“Does a female athlete get the same? I’m not sure that is the case.

“There is still an evolutionary piece where all of us coaching have to prove ourselves and that the glass ceiling is still there.”

In the space of two years, Premiership Women’s Rugby has seen the representation of female head coaches plummet to zero.

Susie Appleby and Rachel Taylor’s dismissal at Exeter Chiefs and Sale Sharks, there are currently no women in a top PWR job.

While female coaches are commonplace at various levels of club rugby across the world, there is an increasingly lack of female presence at the top of the sport.

There is hope that as the years go by, any unconscious bias will be removed from decision makers.

SVNS does buck this trend, but it was only in 2023 that Emilie Bydwell was the only female head coach on the Series and following her bronze medal winning success at the Paris Olympics has seen a significant increase on the whistlestop tour of the world.

Having worked in numerous environments over the years at different levels of rugby, Mather is of the belief that gender should be taken out of the equation entirely.

“We’re still obsessed with men coaches and women coaches,” Mather said.

“But should we be looking at the qualities that male coaches bring in and that female coaches bring in?

“Susie Appleby coaches differently to me, but we’re both female. Ronan O’Gara will coach differently to Warren Gatland. We all do things differently.

“We’re still very hung up on biological gender. If you go deeper than biological gender, look at someone like me, Susie, LJ Lewis or Rachel Taylor, we’ve all got different experiences, places we have been and what success we have had.

“Does biological gender matter or does it matter how you coach or how their brain is wired, what male and female attributes they have in how they work and what they value?

“There are many male coaches that value things that I value. They’re just biologically male and I’m female. But we value similar things.

“I’ve worked with many people. I’ve worked with female coaches whose values are very different to mine. But we’re both still female.”

In an appearance on The Good, The Scaz & The Rugby, Mather was asked about Emilie Bydwell’s viral Premier Rugby Sevens interview in which she recognised the use of empathy in her coaching.

Immediately Mather felt a connection with the Olympic bronze medal-winning coach.

 

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Over the course of her career, Mather has prided herself on developing meaningful bonds with her players through nurturing a player’s individual development.

It is a technique that has served her well and allowed the likes of Abi Burton, Claudia MacDonald and numerous others to thrive.

“She sees the world as I see the world,” Mather said. “She really cares about her players and when you care for people, you go the extra mile. It just happens.

“I care about this group of players I have got. I care about my staff already. I can see how hard everybody works and I can see how hard everybody wants it.

“You do more than average because you care. Why is that a weakness? How can that be a weakness? How can it be a weakness caring about people?

“When you care about people and you care that they are doing the best that they can, surely you are just going to get closer.

“To me, the way I am wired, that’s logical. Maybe not to other people, but to me that empathy is logical.”

Mather’s arrival at GB Rugby Sevens sees her coach the shortened format of the game at the elite level for the first time.

For over two decades Red Rose #35 has concerned herself with 15-a-side rugby, coaching at the RFU, London Irish, Wasps Women and Trailfinders Women.

After leaving the latter ahead of the 2024/25 Premiership Women’s Rugby season, her four-month introduction to a fast-paced life in the fastest format of the game has been eye-opening.

“The word I might use is bonkers,” Mather said. “But in a good way. A really good way.

“In 15s you play for 80 minutes and then you’ve got a week to sort things out. If things go wrong, you can correct it in an 80 minute period, you’ve got a whole raft of substitutions you can use.

“In sevens it all happens in 14 minutes. Everything that happens is impactful there and then. You make an error in sevens; you haven’t really got many more minutes to claim that back.

“I’m getting my head around the vibe and the intensity of it. It is just so intense and so different.”

But just as soon as acknowledging a need to learn more about rugby sevens’ nuances, Mather points out that her players are not being hindered at Hazelwood.

Principally referencing the appointment of Will Broderick as an assistant coach, after he arrived back on home soil after taking charge of Brazil Women at the past two Olympic Games and a 10th place finish in Paris, Mather sees it as part of her role to cover all bases with her coaching appointments.

“He’s an incredible technical coach and really strong in how he builds sessions,” Mather said.

“My role as head coach is to have the right staff and the right responsibilities. He’s done a lot of our rugby as I’m getting up to speed.

“We are coaching international athletes, and they don’t deserve somebody who’s learning all the time.

“The whole of GB7s’ women’s environment is learn, learn, learn, change and evolve.

“It’s a challenging environment when it’s like that and the athletes are taking things on, having to move and getting different ways of doing things around them.

“The whole thing is vibrant, intense, challenging. It’s a really interesting environment for all of us.”

After four outings so far this season, Mather’s team sit seventh overall in the women’s competition.

Enjoying their best outing of the season in Dubai, when GB finished fourth overall in the desert, before enduring more difficult outings in Cape Town and Perth.

Most recently GB placed sixth in Vancouver when Crystal Kaua’s Brazil stunned their opponents 19-10 and claimed their highest ever finish in a Series leg.

Mather’s opening four months at the helm of GB have displayed exactly why the former Trailfinders Women and Wasps boss was perfect for the job.

Possessing a relationship with every PWR team and home nation, she has been able to pluck promising young talents and add them to a bed of rugby sevens specialists.

“The fit I have for the role is my knowledge of the female landscape in the UK,” Mather said.

“What is going on in all three nations, knowing the players, understanding female athletes, how they work and how to support all of those things. The human being and the athlete.

“All of that stuff has been front and centre to how I operate and how I see performance.”

Harlequins wing Katie Shillaker has been a mainstay of Mather’s plans and has thrived on the Series after facing uncertainty at club level with such competition at the Twickenham Stoop.

Bristol Bears’ Reneeqa Bonner and Trailfinders’ Vickly Laflin were named in an England training squad just weeks after making their GB debuts at the tail end of 2024, Catherine Richards made her debut in Perth and will contend for a spot in Sean Lynn’s first squad as Wales coach.

There is hope that in the years to come that GB’s relationships with unions will see more player crossover between Test match rugby and the sevens.

In a Women’s World Cup year, it has been challenging to pin down players, such as Laflin and Bonner, who have seen their services called upon by Red Roses boss John Mitchell in recent training camps.

Noting how many top class women’s professionals have plied their trade on the Series for spells of their careers, there is certainly an element of ‘watch this space’ when it comes to the development of the privately-funded GB programme in the years to come.

“If you look at the current Red Roses backline, virtually every one of them has spent time on the World Series,” Mather said.

“Natasha Hunt, Emily Scarratt, Holly Aitchison, Helena Rowland, Tatyana Heard, Ellie Kildunne, Meg Jones, Jess Breach – all of them.

“When there’s only seven people on the pitch there is nowhere to hide. You have to be able to tackle, you have to be able to catch-pass, you have to read defences, you’ve got to be able to take people on yourself, to look after the ball in contact.

“Your skill level goes through the roof. I think that Scotland, Wales and England, as we go forward because everyone is consumed with this World Cup year, there are huge conversations to be had around the development of players and how sevens can work for that.”