Gill Burns MBE

Gill Burns MBE has helped shape women’s rugby at Waterloo for more than three decades. Her England debut against Sweden took place at the club in 1988. In 1989, she established Waterloo Ladies, beginning a playing association that continued until 2013 and brought more than 250 club appearances.

The club became the place where her international career and her work for the women’s game met. She helped create opportunities for other women to play and remained involved at Waterloo long after her own England career ended.

She went on to win 73 caps for England across fourteen years, a record at the time. She scored 34 tries. In 1994, she was part of England’s first World Cup-winning team, which beat the United States 38-23. She led the national side for five years, from 1994 to 1999, and her international career lasted until 2002. The RFU later named its women's county championship the Gill Burns Cup. When asked about the honour, she called it totally humbling.

But the story that matters most is the one at Waterloo. She played over 250 matches for the club between 1989 and 2013, a span of twenty-four years. She did not leave when the international honours came. She stayed, and she built.

As President of Waterloo from 2004 to 2006, she shaped the club into a leading force for women's rugby on Merseyside. She served as Vice Chair of women's rugby and later as Chair of Waterloo Women, roles that placed her at the centre of decisions about coaching, fixtures, funding and access. The work was administrative and practical, the kind that does not make headlines but determines whether a club thrives or fades.

Her influence extended beyond Blundellsands. She served as President of the Rugby Football Union for Women from 2002 to 2012, a decade spent advocating for the game at national level. She became President of Lancashire Rugby from 2019 to 2022, and she now serves as Director of Volunteering on the Lancashire board, a role that recognises nearly forty years of involvement in the sport.

Her contribution brought recognition on and off the field. She received an MBE in 2005 for services to sport and entered the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2014. Waterloo voted her its all-time hero in 2013. In 2017, the national women’s county competition was renamed the Gill Burns County Championship. Edge Hill University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2019. These honours recognise both her playing achievements and her sustained contribution to the game. She did not move to a bigger club or a more prominent role elsewhere. She remained at Waterloo, the club she founded when women were not welcome in the bar.

The club where she organised her first England match is the same club where she still serves as Past President and Vice Chair of women's rugby. The players who wear Waterloo colours today do so because Gill Burns decided in 1989 that women belonged there, and then spent three decades making sure they did. She did not wait for permission. She founded a team, organised an international fixture, and built a structure that outlasted her playing career by more than a decade.

Waterloo is her club. She made it so.