Amber Reed is well-known name in the rugby world, with 67 England caps including a 2014 World Cup win, playing for the Bears since 2009 as a formidable fly-half and centre – and most recently, sharing her prowess with the new generation through her coaching of University of Bristol Women’s RFC.
Reed went fully professional in 2019, however has spent the majority of her career – including a World Cup win and a Six Nations Grand Slam – balancing her star studded career with a teaching. Speaking on the difference between semi and fully professional experience, Reed admits that “it [semi-professional] is a tough balancing act and makes rugby definitely a lot harder.”
She highlights the impact that a dual career has on both recovery and mindset, emphasising the difficulty of making sure that “your body [is] fully recovered to be able to physical perform what your head wants it to” – a discrepancy that is only increased when you’re mentally split between two jobs.
The importance of mindset, and of prioritising mental health within sport is something that Amber has been very vocal about. Despite the inclination to think that professional athletes should simply prioritise their physical fitness, Amber cannot emphasise enough the need to practice positive mental health practices within clubs. Her position as an ambassador for the rugby mental health charity Looseheadz, helps to tackle the stigma surrounds mental health in sport, something that Reed describes as how to deal with “the filling-up bucket” – namely how to find areas outside of rugby that act as stress relievers and allow athletes to switch off and deal with the highs and lows of such a constantly changing game.
However, Reed has seen the understanding around mental health significantly improve during her nearly two decades playing, as she feels that the stigma has instead flipped as “it [is now being] seen as a strength to be able to do that [speak about struggling with mental health], whereas I think that before it was almost a weakness”.
Part of Reed’s Looseheadz journey has involved sharing her own mental struggles, a transparency which did not come naturally. “I was pretty much a closed book” she admits, but a series of recurrent injuries required her to completely re-evaluate how she managed setbacks. “It’s the ones that weren’t that bad that caught me off guard … it’s not until you’re in a bit of a dark place that you feel that you need to do something about it”. Having to reassess how to deal with injuries – something even more frustrating given that Reed “does all the extra stuff” to prevent injury – forced her to subvert her mentality from being victimised, to proactively working back to fitness and reminding herself to always “appreciate what you’ve got … go and have fun”.
Reed’s influence in the rugby world is only continuing to grow with her recent appointment as Head Performance Coach of UBWRFC as a part of the ongoing strategic partnership between the Bears and the university. Being able to translate her extensive knowledge and hours on pitch into coaching strategies and achievable goals is no easy task, and Reed credits her success in this field to her prior job as a sport’s teacher as she learnt “the pedagogy of how to teach”. The increased influence that she now has over the next generation of female athletes does not escape Amber, as when asked about what advice she would give to women coming up to professional rugby, her answer is comprehensive and loaded.
“Enjoy what you do. Obviously, it’s going to be hard, there’s going to be challenges – appreciate what you’ve got but go and have fun” is her first piece of advice, evidently influenced from her history of playing to the highest degree of rugby, fearlessly fighting back from injury so many times, and knowing first-hand the feeling of having your efforts rewarded with her World Cup win. However, as much as Reed highlights the need to enjoy the game, she also highlights the duty that female athletes feel, the knowledge that “you’re the ones that people will look back on in ten years’ time and ask, “What have you done to influence and grow the game?””. But as much as she feels the eyes of the next generation on her current actions, Reed equally highlights that this growth isn’t something that women “have to be grateful for … because it’s what we deserve as women and players of the sport”.
The call to “be grateful for the people who came before you but keep driving the standard and keep moving the game forward” is one that rings true across the whole PWR currently, as every week brings more examples of sensational rugby. Reed is the first to uplift her competitors, knowing that there ‘are no easy games in our run- up,’ but the captain is powerfully confident in the capabilities of her teammates, setting her definition of a successful season as something strikingly simple – “Win the Prem. Simple as that.”
With Bears edging into the top four with last weekend’s victory over Exeter Chiefs, the coming weeks are sure to be examples of sensational rugby, as the girls dig even deeper to ‘hold our fate in our own hands’ and continue to push the game to higher and higher standards.
