World Cup heartbreak driving Ellie Kildunne to ‘rewrite the fairy tale’

Ellie Kildunne is typically honest when asked about her motivations ahead of a potentially seismic 12 months.

If all goes to plan then 365 days from today, Kildunne will walk out at a packed Allianz Stadium for the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 final, and she is determined to avoid the heartache the Red Roses experienced in Auckland two years ago.

Her appearance in the last showpiece match could not have started any better, as the elegant full-back touched down within three minutes and England raced into a 14-0 lead.

But the toll of playing with 14 players for more than an hour eventually told and the smiling assassins Ayesha Leti-I’iga and Stacey Waaka combined to propel hosts New Zealand to a thrilling 34-31 victory in front of a then-world record crowd at Eden Park.

“To be a World Cup winner is something that people dream of. I never want to feel the way that I felt after the last World Cup,” Kildunne admits.

“When I went back into the changing room, I was numb, and I wanted it all to start again there and then. I wanted it to be the World Cup there and then.”

Defeat was only Kildunne’s second in five years as an England player and first since 2018. But she had not been a guaranteed starter for the Red Roses as they embarked on the 30-match winning run that was shattered so completely by the Black Ferns.

At 23, she knew she needed to improve if she was to help the team back to the summit.

Sitting high above the clouds as England’s plane ferried the dejected squad home in the following days, Kildunne reached for a pen and some paper and started to sketch the outline of a strategy.

“It's a long flight back from New Zealand,” she continues. “I got my notepad out and I wrote down all the bits of my game, every side of it; the contact, my strength, my nutrition, my running, whatever it may be.

“I wrote down a plan in each one. How I'm going to be a World Cup winner come 2025, in those areas.

“And I started studying the game a little bit more. Not just watching it but studying individual parts. So, talking to spring coaches; 'How can I be more efficient in my sprinting?'

“Writing down notes of that, highlighting, almost like I'm revising. It is an obsession, but you've got to be obsessed. You've got to be obsessed with what you do, you've got to be passionate about what you do.

“And I think it's our own fairy tale that we're writing. I think if we won the last World Cup, we'd come back and everyone would think that England are going to win.

“We haven't won that World Cup. I haven't been a World Cup winner.

“I already had a spark inside me [but] petrol has been thrown on that and every single day that I wake up that petrol is burning and burning and burning and it's not dimming out.

“So, come 2025 we're going to rewrite the fairy tale and it's going to be in front of a home crowd, and I think it's the perfect time to do it.”

Whatever Kildunne scribbled down on that long flight back from New Zealand has clearly worked.

England have not lost since that eventful November night in Auckland, arriving in Canada this week to defend the WXV 1 title they won in New Zealand last year on a 17-match winning run.

Kildunne has started 13 of those Tests and will line up at full-back again against USA on Sunday. The reigning Women’s Six Nations Player of the Championship, she has become both the fulcrum of the team and face of Women’s RWC 2025.

It is no coincidence that Kildunne has blossomed under the tutelage of John Mitchell and his coaching staff, who she describes as a “breath of fresh air”.

“It’s the happiest I’ve felt,” Kildunne says when asked about her form. “It’s a new era and they’ve just allowed me to be unapologetically myself off the pitch and on the pitch.

“I think the happier you are off pitch, the happier you are on pitch, and it gives me bags of confidence when the ball is in my hands, when the ball is in my team-mates’ hands, that we're going to do something special.

“I don't think it's the finished article at all – I'm well off of the finished article. The only difference this season is that I've been really, really happy playing.”

That happiness, according to Kildunne, stems from the freedom the players are afforded to try things, whether that be, in the full-back’s case, photography, podcasting or chasing her Olympic dream.

“They’ve really brought in this confidence that ‘We believe in you’. We know what you are good at, let's go do what you are good at. You're not trying to be anyone else,” she adds.

LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 14: England's Ellie Kildunne lets fan sign her shirt during the Women's Rugby Friendly match between Englands Red Roses and New Zealands Black Ferns at Allianz Stadium on September 14, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Bob Bradford - CameraSport via Getty Images)

“You need that confidence to be yourself and find what your strength is. Because if I'm honest, I don't look up to any player.

“I pick things out of people's games, men's or women's, that are attributes that I want so I can make my own superpower, my own superhero.”

Kildunne’s biggest superpower is perhaps that relentless drive – her “obsession” – to win the World Cup with England.

It is why the notebook came out again after Great Britain’s disappointing sevens campaign at Paris 2024; to make sure she got more than the obligatory rings tattoo from the experience.

And it is also why she returned to England’s training base during the sole week off she had been given following the Olympics to catch up with meetings and photograph her team-mates.

“I was ready to get in straight away,” she insists. “I don't like slowing down. I'm not ready to slow down.

“I know there's so much to come from me as a player and I want to grow in every way I can do, and I'm looking forward to the World Cup.”

Later, Kildunne adds: “I love rugby so much, so I never want to stop.”

Of course, there is room for downtime. She talks with wide eyes about her last night in Paris, walking alone through the athletes’ village, capturing precious moments on her beloved camera.

WXV 1, starting with USA on Sunday, offers Kildunne and England another opportunity to improve. “We learn from every single game that we play,” she says.

But the goal remains the same, to inspire a new generation of rugby fans by winning the sport’s biggest prize.

“Each game that we play, more and more people are coming out to watch it, more people want to watch women’s sport,” Kildunne says.

“More and more people want to see what’s going on and what the noise is about. I’m buzzing for the World Cup.”

You aren’t the only one, Ellie.