Georgie Perris-Redding leads US Eagles as co-captain ahead of Wales clash

It’s a long way from Crewe & Nantwich RUFC to Little Rock, Arkansas, but five years ago Georgie Perris-Redding, who started playing rugby at the Cheshire club, made the 4,300-mile trip. She’s racked up plenty of air miles since and on Saturday she will run out at Cardiff Arms Park, against Wales as US Eagles co-captain.

Perris-Redding explained: “Jess Wooden, [a wing out of the University of Florida] who played for USA, she was at the time playing for Sale, and her and [England flanker] Hannah Field, who was another one of my teammates, were going to do a bit of coaching at ARPTC.”

The American Rugby Professional Training Center, brainchild of former Eagle and Eagles coach Julie McCoy and entrepreneur Tania Hahn, ran for seven years as a high-performance hub.

Wooden said, “‘Look, I think you have the potential to be a great sevens player. Do you want to come and do a summer with us?’ And at the time, it was early years at Sale. You were paid a match fee, but you weren’t contracted. So I was like, ‘Sounds like a good way to spend the summer, in the middle of Arkansas.’ Definitely the fittest I’ve ever been in my life.”

And, in the blistering south, the hottest, “Just sweating everything off.” It paid off. Perris-Redding had the talent as well as the fitness and she had something else in her pocket. Born in Detroit, where her parents both worked for Ford, she qualified to play for the Eagles.

Her spell at the ARPTC focused on sevens. “Working with Julie, and then Hannah Stolba, Rysz Chadwick, who’s with Life University, [in Georgia] some really good coaches,” she said. “And it was really good for me. That was the first time where I think I was like, ‘Oh, I want more from my rugby.’”

It turned out her future lay in 15s. Now a full-time Premiership Women’s Rugby pro, the combative flanker has been to two World Cups and leads the Eagles with Erica Jarrell-Searcy, a second row and a clubmate in England. Perris-Redding’s twin, scrum-half India, was forced by injury to retire but Perris-Redding has overcome her own serious knee problem to play on, in her prime at 29.

Her US call-up came in 2022 from then-coach Rob Cain, who was also working at Saracens. Sale “played Sarries [and] a couple of days later I got a call. He was like, ‘Look, I think you have real potential. I’m going to ask you to come into a camp soon.’ That camp happened to be in Wales… and I never looked back.”

Perris-Redding played against Wales with a host of highly experienced Eagles, all-time greats Alev Kelter and Alycia Washington among them. The US won, 31-23 in Llanelli. That was a non-cap World Cup warm-up but Perris-Redding’s first full cap came that June, against Canada in New Zealand. Five years on, combining UK club rugby with US internationals “does have its difficulties but… one thing that’s fantastic is I’ve noticed how much easier it’s getting, and how cohesive it is between USA and Sale. The communication is great. They work well together, and… England have paved the way, and this is what it needs to look like. We’re starting to see massive improvements.”

England are runaway world leaders, winning 39 games in a row before being held by Canada last week, a 26-26 thriller. Perris-Redding’s Eagles are indeed improving, squaring a series with South Africa in the summer and kicking off the autumn with a 40-36 win in Dublin against an Ireland team then ranked three spots higher, now just one, fifth to sixth. Perris-Redding scored the Eagles’ first try, from short range, as they overcame a familiar slow start.

A “big focus for [head coach] Jack [Hanratty] is our rugby IQ,” Perris-Redding said. “How we can be that clinical, and how we can wake up from minute one, and that’s something that we’re really focusing on this week. Because I … think we can say we had a good build-up to that Ireland game. We were ready. We were well prepared.”

And yet they still conceded three quick tries. On Saturday, Perris-Redding wants her team to focus on “fixing those small details, making sure that we don’t concede like we did in those first 20 minutes.

“I think with it being a short turnaround, it’s definitely something that we’ve had to take into consideration in terms of recovery and load. But I think the more time we have together, especially with the young girls coming through, playing key positions, key roles, moving us around the field, I think we’re getting to know Nina and Bella better and what they need, and vice versa. So hopefully, that all has a positive impact going into Saturday.”

Nina Mason and Bella Vogel are young backs making their mark. Mason, who plays in the back three, won her first cap last weekend. Vogel, a fly-half, made her debut this summer aged 19. Both out of Pennsylvania, both still at college at Life, they are startlingly talented signs that something is shifting in American rugby, girls and boys playing rather than teens finding the game at college as most have done for decades. Rugby’s roots are reaching deeper.

Perris-Redding played with the boys at Crewe & Nantwich, which has a knack for producing talented twins, having nurtured England back-rows Tom and Ben Curry. But Perris-Redding said she only really found her stride towards the end of her teens, having excelled in athletics. She professes herself “absolutely jealous” of Vogel’s fast start.

“I can only imagine what it feels like being that skilled in the way she sees the game, which is hard because you don’t grow up watching rugby [in the US], and I feel like that’s how a lot of people develop their IQ at a young age over here, especially. Honestly, the way she sees the game, the way she directs it, is fantastic and scary because she is so young and she’s only going to get better.”

Wales thrashed South Africa last week, 50-19, putting the Americans on notice. In October the Eagles will face Italy in Nashville, Tennessee, and Mansfield, Texas, before a marquee game against England in Harrison, New Jersey, a double bill with the Eagles men against an Australia XV. Perris-Redding insisted her team was not looking past the next challenge in Cardiff.

“All we spoke about was Ireland the first week. All we speak about now is Wales, and that’ll be the same for Italy. I think the coaches have done a great job in really breaking it down and allowing us as players to focus on what’s important right now. We know that the challenge of England is coming, but I think by then we’ll be very excited to give that a good go. I think this is the best rugby we’ve played for a while and England are getting tested now, so I think it’s a good time to go out there and play them.”