Linde van der Velden: 'The Netherlands definitely has the talent to play in the PWR'

Sometimes players take a road less trodden, and that’s certainly true for Linde van der Velden. The 30-year-old has packed down in scrums and put her head in places most wouldn’t put their elbow for Exeter Chiefs Women since they came into existence, scoring the team’s first ever Premiership try.

She was a recruit of the now departed Susie Appleby, with van der Velden describing the former head coach as “the main reason I moved over to Exeter and to the Premiership. She was one of the people that made me feel so welcome and created this second home for me.”

In Appleby’s place has come Steve Slavin, under which the Devon based side have had a mixed bag of results in the opening five rounds of the PWR season, with Bristol Bears in wait this weekend.

Fixture

PWR

Exeter Chiefs Women

41 - 10

Full-time

Bristol Bears Women

All Stats and Data

“We’re quite happy with the start,” reflected the current Dutch national captain.

“I think overall, especially since we’ve made some changes to the coaching staff, changes with the players, and within the structure of the programme, for example, our game plan, we knew it was going to take time for that to settle and be put into games, so we’re quite happy with where we are.”

The towering second row has come to accept that the changes made at the club at the end of last season were necessary.

“I think there’s more people like me at the club that really miss her (Appleby). But she had been with us for five years and I think maybe for the programme, that change is good.

“I don’t agree with how things went down, but for a big group of us, we obviously already knew Steve. He’s taken on a bigger role, but he’s still defence coach, he’s still forwards coach. So in that sense, that hasn’t changed.

“I think for a lot of young girls coming through the system, that’s also been a focus point for us, that we want to develop more younger players, and we want to invest more time into that.

“Because there’s been years where, and I think that’s understandable too, when we just started with the Premiership, you’re trying to catch up with all these other clubs, and you’re trying to compete with them. And then I guess you can lose sight of developing younger players, and your main focus stays on the more experienced players.

“But at some point, they are going to leave, and you want people to fill those roles. And I think that’s one of the main focus points that Steve and Oli (Bishop) have brought.”

The PWR has not seen many Dutch players on its pitches since its revamp in 2017, Sam Martinez Gion and Tessa Wijmans won the Premiership with Saracens back in 2018 and Isa Prins played for Harlequins as injury cover for a few months, however, van der Velden is the only player from the Netherlands to have played consistently, which given the proximity of Amsterdam by flight from the UK is surprising.

On the outside it seems like a missed opportunity that Dutch players haven’t made the move to a more professional setup and taken advantage of the PWR like other countries outside of the UK such as Canadians, Americans, and Irish players, many of whom play for Exeter.

However, digging a little deeper, it becomes clear with a smaller player pool and difficulty visa wise to obtain work in the UK after Brexit, why van der Velden is the sole representative, as she explains.

“Joining the best competition in the world has definitely changed my game and developed me so much, if you move abroad, it’s so much easier for rugby to just be your main focus point, you’re in a bubble where everybody has rugby in the first spot.

“But if you’re from a small nation like the Netherlands, where rugby is just an amateur sport that you play on the side, it would not be your priority.

“I was very lucky that I moved to the UK before Brexit happened, as visa-wise now it is actually quite difficult. You can come here (to the UK), but you have to come on a ‘Sportsperson’ visa and the visa basically means that you can only be paid by your club, so you can’t do another job. And with the Premiership contracts, the money isn’t that great.

“So especially if you’re new to the competition and you come from a small country, there’s no way you’re going to get one of the best contracts out there. You’re going to have to probably come over and work into a better contract. So that makes it a lot more difficult.

“For example, if you want to do a job on the side, it needs to be something that you do from the Netherlands or somewhere else, but that means an online job. For some girls that’s not the job they want to do.

“So it’s not necessarily the easiest decision, but I do think there’s a lot of girls out there from the Netherlands that definitely have the talent to play in the PWR or at least be involved in a Premiership club and work their way into a team.

“But, it’s just a lot more difficult, especially with the competition that there is now. I think almost everybody that wants to play a high level of rugby wants to be in the PWR.”

With the year drawing to a close, many players will be taking stock and slowing down after a chaotic few months in the build-up to and during the Rugby World Cup, a tournament which unfortunately for van der Velden’s Holland, they did not qualify for.

The Dutch team were unable to make the final 16 of the tournament when playing in WXV 3 last year. However, they did travel to Brazil to play in their World Cup warm up games this summer.

The Exeter stalwart admits seeing many of her club team mates disappearing to the World Cup on her doorstep with games hosted at Sandy Park, was a hard pill to swallow.

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard. It was quite disappointing.

“I think it was always something that I was quite realistic about. I knew there was an opportunity for us to qualify, but to qualify was always going to be very difficult. And when it came down to WXV, we already knew when the pools were shown that we were going to be relying on other people’s scores to be able to make it.

“We did everything we could at that time to qualify. But there were injuries and we struggled to get the same level out there. If you look at England, for example, if England had injuries this World Cup, even if there was someone else on the pitch, the level just didn’t drop.

“There’s other countries out there where you can see that the moment there’s injuries and someone else replaces the shirt, there is a difference, and we were at that point at WXV where that was a bit of a problem.

“We need to make sure that in the next qualification rounds for the next World Cup, that we’re not in the same position and that we have better depth and we have a better programme in place and more game time for the broader team.

“World Rugby has seen that we are a growing rugby country, so there’s more opportunities for us to play games. When I started playing for the Netherlands, we would play two official international games a year, maybe three. And now we’ve played in WXV, we had the European campaign this year and we went to Brazil. So that is already like eight games in one year which makes such a big difference.

As a country, the Netherlands has one big advantage compared to the Canadians, Americans and Australians, as geographically it’s such a small country, it’s only two and a half hours to drive across, which means national camps can be organised easily and regularly.

As a proud captain of her country van der Velden names speedy centre Franka Holland, the sister of All Black and 2025 World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year, Fabian Holland, and experienced lock Inger Jongerius, who won Rugby Europe’s Player of the Tournament award this year, as players to watch in an exciting upcoming year for the Dutch national side.

“(In the past year) we’ve grown and bonded as a team, which has given me a very hopeful and good feeling for the future.”

Holland will once again play in the Rugby Europe Women’s Championship next spring against Belgium, Portugal and Spain. And will then look to compete in the new-look WXV Global tournament in the autumn.