Maud Muir on returning to club: 'It's been tricky. It is hard to switch your brain on'

You have to scroll back on the PWR results pages to just under a year ago to find Gloucester-Hartpury‘s last loss, and you have to go back even further to November 2022 to find England’s.

To be someone who has known only victory for the best part of 12 months both domestically and internationally is a rarity, and only a few Red Roses can hold claim to it. One of them is Maud Muir.

From a fresh faced prop plying her trade and waiting her turn in the then-called Premier 15s for Wasps Women under Giselle Mather’s guidance, to becoming the world champion’s starting tighthead is quite a feat. Keeping Sarah Bern on the bench is another achievement to tip one’s hat to.

But after the dust has settled on the emphatic World Cup win on home soil, reality comes into vision and Muir admits it’s been a tough transition moving from the World Cup bubble back into club life with Gloucester-Hartpury.

“It’s definitely been tricky. I feel like everyone coming back from the World Cup has struggled, not struggled, but it’s been hard because you build for three or four years and then you just come back and you’re building for another four years. You don’t have a chance to really think about it too much.”

The 24-year-old admits the time off after the World Cup final was potentially not long enough for players to completely switch off.

“We were celebrating but had to be around for the week because we had a commercial thing that we had to do and then the following week we had off, and then we were back in Gloucester, so only really (had) one proper week to switch off which probably wasn’t quite enough.”

Despite the challenge of changing mindset and focus since the World Cup campaign, what has made switching every day thoughts from winning a World Cup trophy to winning another PWR trophy easier has been the likeness of Dan Murphy to former head coach Sean Lynn, claims Muir.

“He is pretty similar. He’s still big on the culture side of things, he probably dedicates a bit more time to set piece being a front row himself. When you know there’s a head coach who’s coming who’s really forward focused it’s that kind of thing that makes you lick your lips a little bit because it’s like ‘oh no I’m quite good at this. I like doing this.’

“I am struggling to be fair (with the transition), like it is hard to switch your brain on and get motivated for sure. It is such a build-up to the World Cup and coming back to club it’s just a completely different setting. But I do think that it will become easier and we are kind of all in it together as there’s a lot of the England girls (at Gloucester).”

And the club seem to be doing pretty well with the return of their internationals, winning four from four so far in the PWR. Muir tries to identify what it is that keeps Gloucester recording W’s.

“I think especially the last three years, we’ve obviously been a pretty winning mindset team. And even when we win, we would always look at the game and be quite critical of ourselves. I think obviously we’ve been putting out good results, but we know that we can be so much better.”

Despite winning a World Cup being the ultimate box to be ticked on any player’s dream to-do list, the front row admits there is still a carrot which is powering this Gloucester-Hartpury side forwards this season.

“At the beginning of the season, we sat down and we all talked about our aims and, you know, it is to write history and be one of, I think it’s only three teams in history or something to win four on the bounce (PWR titles) and none of which are female. So we would really be writing history, so every win, every point is very, very important if we want to win the league again.”

The next few weeks in the run in to Christmas see Gloucester take on Bristol Bears, Trailfinders and Leicester Tigers. And the reigning champions and three-peaters are not taking any side for granted, but Muir admits after the intensity of the past year, some time away from rugby will be a welcome change over the festive period.

“They’re going to be really hard games and then knowing that we’ve got that break over Christmas, I’m really excited to actually try and fully switch off for a little bit.”