York RI: Strong, Empowered, Loved and Safe

To introduce our new website, we are running a series of blog posts from our players exploring what being part of York RI Women’s Rugby means to them. Everyone’s favourite 9 Vera Van Gool discusses finding the team and finally feeling at home…

My journey into rugby started, paradoxically, when I felt at my weakest but pretended I was at my strongest. I'm originally from the Netherlands. I was always curious about rugby – the quintessential British sport. But growing up, I was always the artsy kid. I moved to the UK in September 2015 to make my lifelong dream to settle here come true.

What brought me "across the pond", to where I thought the grass was greener, was the pursuit of a PhD in Climate Justice at the University of Reading. I was off to a flying start, throwing myself into work and making friends.

Whilst this looked ideal from the outside, truth was behind the facade I was crumbling. Work was intense, isolating and my writing was highly criticised. I was trying to date at the time, but despite meeting plenty of people, no one piqued my interest. And friends, or well, peers were also feeling the pressure and kept last minute dipping out of plans to hang out. I was spiralling deeper and deeper into depression, but I didn't want to acknowledge it.

When spring 2016 came a friend suggested I join her for rugby preseason. In classic me style, I threw myself into rugby. It was tough, and I realise now I was in desperate need of a break. The team I was playing for were trying to win the league to get into the Championship, and it was hard to keep up - I only got 90 minutes of play that season. I felt like a nobody. It even came to a point where we'd been out for a cup game, 4 hours’ drive each way, and on the way back they forgot me at a service station (don’t worry, they came back within minutes). I'd clearly made myself so small I’d become invisible.

In parallel, my work was unravelling. The words I'd written towards my PhD had become redundant, as I realised I was arguing the wrong point. But my ultimate breaking point arrived quite literally - I was knocked off my bike on the way home from rugby training.

I was off work for 4 months before I decided to give up the PhD. Looking back, I realise it was a brave decision, but at the time I felt like a failure. My Dutch friends asked if I was moving "back home", but I still had a dream to make the UK my home. So I got a job near York and moved up North. As if by fate I met a girl in a dance class who talked to me about her rugby team.

I decided to give the sport another shot and joined her for training at York RI. Instantly, I fell in love with the team: no pressure, friendly, a good laugh. I immediately felt at home, the feeling I'd dreamt of finding in the UK. And my previous experience wasn’t wasted - I found that I knew more than I thought I did and got to practice those skills with tonnes of game time!

With more confidence in myself I started dating again. One of those dates got more and more serious and developed into a relationship that, five years later, would have whisked me away to Manchester in pursuit of my partner's career.

I remember distinctly the grief I felt anticipating leaving my club, the club who supported me on my way to recovery from depression. Little did I know the club was also grieving losing me, as became evident one drunken night when the captain sobbed a heartfelt "if anything ever goes wrong, there's always a place for you here!".

And things did go wrong.

My relationship broke down, luckily before I moved to Manchester, and I was suddenly faced with staying in York alone.

But the realisation soon hit that I was never truly alone. York RI has a way of wrapping their arms around you and piercing straight through to your heart. Reminiscing that drunken night at the club, the team was even there for me before I knew I needed them. All the things I felt I lacked, I had right here in this club. They make me feel strong, empowered, loved and safe.

Looking back to my old self, lacking confidence in life and rugby, to now coaching the next generation of rugby union players and smashing life makes me so, so proud. And it’s from the bottom of my heart I say: with a team like RI having your back, you can overcome anything.