Joy Neville could not avoid rugby even if she tried. Her father and all four of her older brothers played rugby, including one professionally. She first picked up a ball in her backyard in Limerick, Ireland, when she was 8 in a scrimmage with her siblings, breaking her nose in the process.
But it would be nearly a decade before she played her first match competitively. The opportunities for women to play rugby just weren’t there, she said in a recent interview. After that first game, her brother Dave offered his advice.
“He said, ‘You’re going to play for Ireland very soon, and not only are you going to play for Ireland, you’re going to captain your country,’” Neville recalled. “‘But if you’re going to do that, we need to go down to the park and practice your tackle technique.’”
Neville would indeed go on to captain the women’s rugby team for Ireland, making multiple World Cup appearances and using her platform to boost women’s participation in the heavily male-dominated sport. This week, she’ll take that mission one step further as the first woman to be named on a men’s Rugby World Cup officiating panel. As one of the tournament’s television match officials, she will watch matches from a screen and be responsible for helping evaluate penalties…
