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Sarah Bern has demonstrated her pace and power in the opening two rounds of the Six Nations - Morgan Harlow/RFU
Given she can deadlift the combined equivalent of Ellis Genge and Marcus Smith, it is little wonder Sarah Bern’s raw strength and mobility have earned her widespread praise as a world-class tighthead prop.
“It’s flattering to hear, but you can’t believe the hype or there’s a risk that you stop working hard, get complacent or entitled,” Bern tells Telegraph Sport. “Tightheads in the women’s game can still be super athletic – you can make it whatever you want it to be. It’s a lovely place to be in women’s sport, because we don’t have to mirror the men’s game.”
It is this latter point that Bern wants to emphasise. She is keen to address the furore that followed her England side’s 67-12 annihilation of Wales in the Women’s Six Nations last weekend, when she invited her Bristol Bears team-mate Jasmine Joyce-Butchers to take part in a TikTok dance during the BBC’s post-match coverage.
Credit: BBC Sport
The Wales full-back found herself at the centre of a social media storm, with many questioning the three-time Olympian’s professionalism and, given the optics, whether the likes of Jac Morgan would have done such a thing if they had been thumped by such a colossal margin.
“It’s not men’s rugby and we’re not trying to be men’s rugby,” insists Bern. “I’m in massive support of Jaz. She’s incredibly hard-working, she’s fun and light-hearted off the pitch. I’m the same. If I’m too focused on rugby or I’m too tunnel vision, I actually don’t play as well as I would like or people expect because it becomes too small of a world.
“We just want to show personality. Also, the BBC asked us to do it! Nobody has ever done that before so we were like, ‘Let’s give it a go and see what happens’. We can learn and grow from it. If we don’t try things like that, we’re never going to grow the sport. Now it’s started a conversation. It’s getting eyeballs on the game. And I guarantee more people will say, ‘Did you see those two rugby players?’ And they then watch the game.”
When you consider the clip in question has been viewed almost four million times on X alone, Bern makes a valid point. The week previous, a clip of her wearing headphones and dancing with fans after England’s opening-round win over Italy also went viral.
The men’s game, Bern insists, should not always serve as the frame of reference, especially in a sport that is often accused of stifling the personalities of its male stars. This, she argues, is where the women’s game can retain its appeal and charm, while challenging perceptions.
This week, research conducted by Vodafone found that a staggering 70 per cent of Britons who hold a negative view about women’s rugby have never watched the sport. But those who have seen women’s rugby content in the past year have a markedly different view, with more than half (56 per cent) more excited to watch this year’s Women’s Six Nations than the men’s equivalent.
“I’m not surprised at that,” says Bern. “It’s a traditionally male sport and with any sort of tradition, it’s hard to change minds, because people think that’s the way it should be. Women’s sport in general is young, it’s growing.”
Bern knows this only too well, having had Ilona Maher – rugby’s most followed player on social media who has taken the sport to new audiences – as the perfect sounding board in recent months. She struck up a close camaraderie with Maher during the United States sevens star’s three-month stint at Bristol. The 68-times capped Red Rose goes as far to describe Maher’s influence as a “turning point” in her career.
“It’s been so cool to work with Ilona,” she reflects. “Not only is she a boss, an independent woman, she’s such a lovely person and she brings out the best in everyone. She was a really refreshing person to be around and a very cool experience. She made me feel more confident and inspired me to keep on being myself. I really loved how Ilona is celebrating being in a bigger body and making people feel safe and I love how authentic she is to herself. She’s the same person you see on social media – there’s no difference.”
Rugby helped her overcome eating issues
Maher’s overtness in highlighting her bigger physique struck a deep chord with Bern, who struggled with body image insecurities as a teenager. She was so conscious of her broad frame in school that, a year before her GCSEs, she developed a dysfunctional relationship with food in her quest to look more petite. Her obsession to conform to a smaller body type meant she lost her periods – a dangerous sign that her hormonal health was being put at risk.
“For a period of time in school, I had a real issue with eating and overtraining,” says Bern. “I lost loads of weight. I looked tiny. It got to the point where it was quite bad, it was quite obsessive. I just wouldn’t eat. It became a competition and it got to the point where I would try to eat less each day. I was in year 10, that time where you want to try and fit in. I was always super sporty but bigger and broader, and felt that pressure to look small and skinny. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t look like my sister and my mum.”
Bern was still in the grips of her obsessive phase regarding food when she turned up to a rugby camp to discover she had no energy. She hated every moment of it, but it made her flick a switch. “I was terrible at the rugby camp – well, not terrible, I just didn’t have any fuel in me,” she recalls. “I was getting absolutely smashed by players and I just didn’t want to be bad at rugby.”
The 27-year-old has since learnt not just to accept her bigger body but embrace it. When she returned from a meniscus tear last year, having missed England’s entire Six Nations campaign, she was asked to put on six kilograms and bulk up to 100kg (15st 10lb), with the caveat of maintaining her speed and power.
Having had issues around food in the past, Bern naturally had her reservations, but the sight of her torpedoing through defences has become synonymous with the Red Roses’ superiority. The Six Nations is only two rounds old but Bern tops nearly every metric in the prop charts, despite only coming on as a replacement in England’s opener against Italy.
With her deadlift having peaked to a staggering 200kg and her bench press 100kg, only now does she realise why she slipped into the vicious cycle of disordered eating.
“I’d tell myself to love my younger body, it’s powerful, strong and fast and it’s achieved things nobody else has achieved,” she says. “But I’d caveat that with, ‘How could she?’ There were no role models that look like me who were the face of brand deals, who were pushed in mainstream media. That’s not just in rugby – it’s in athletics, it’s in weightlifting.
“Society is still biased to female ideals. It’s been a long journey, but if I didn’t have my body, I wouldn’t be Sarah Bern, the tighthead prop who can score from 50 metres out. Right now, I’m the heaviest, strongest and fastest I’ve ever been. I want to push the message out there to young girls that there isn’t one type of female athletic body.”
Should she be asked to dance in front of the BBC cameras again this Women’s Six Nations, Bern, ever a pillar of enthusiasm in this age of visibility for the women’s game, would not give it a second thought.
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