“I like capturing people’s laughs; I think being able to hear it through the picture is so cool,” Maud Muir says as she discusses her favourite photographs from hundreds she has taken behind the scenes in the England women’s camp over the past five years.
Muir, the 24-year-old prop, and her teammates are preparing for a home Rugby World Cup, starting with the opener against USA in Sunderland next Friday.
The scrapbook for the last tournament, which was Muir’s first World Cup, would have ended with the team jetting home without the trophy. The Red Roses’ campaign led them to the final against New Zealand but England lost to the Black Ferns for the second consecutive tournament, and that defeat remains a motivating force for Muir.
“It’s actually the only game I have lost in an England shirt,” she says. “I hadn’t known what it was like. This is the game that matters, all the other games before that, not that they haven’t mattered but it doesn’t have a consequence.
“I remember being so devastated, everyone was. We were all heartbroken. I think that does drive me quite a bit to not feel like that after a game again. I think it was a learning curve for a lot of us. We do talk about it now and we have learned from it. It’s just being able to move on and park it but make it as fuel for this one.”
England have not lost a game since that final and they have only become more dominant. Their final two games before the 2025 Rugby World Cup were won 97-7 and 40-6 against Spain and France respectively and Muir believes they were the perfect gauntlet to lay down for their rivals at the upcoming tournament.
“We obviously want to win but especially in that France game we performed as well,” Muir says. “We wanted to go out there and be like ‘this is how we play’ and send a statement to the rest of the teams. It does fill us with more confidence that our plans and training, everything is working.
“The cool thing is that we know how much better we can get. We could have put a lot more points on France – we weren’t as accurate as we hoped but we put 40 points on them. It is really good for us to know that even not at our peak we can still perform and put points on a really class side but also know we have a lot of work still to do.”
Lilli’s first cap shirt presentation alongside Scaz; one of the youngest and oldest in the team yet they still have such a strong bond.
At Canada WXV for Botts’ [Hannah Botterman’s] 50th cap. I feel like you can hear the laughs through this photo. I also love how the heights gradually go up It just shows how diverse in size rugby is.
Whale watching in Canada. I love capturing the girls’ emotions – especially laughs.
A cowboy hat for a cowboy. This tournament was when the cowboys were “formed” and I definitely think since then the cowboys have grown!
