England’s Ellie Kildunne: ‘Losing the World Cup final fuelled a fire in me’

Pacy Harlequins back says the Red Roses reaching a home final next year would be ‘pinnacle of our Mount Everest’

Ellie Kildunne doesn’t really need to do any talking. Her highlights reel does it for her. You don’t need to know anything much about her, or her sport, just see her 60m sprint, stutter, and step against the USA, her 40m kick return, with its dummy and hand-off, against Italy, or her 10-minute hat-trick against Sale, and you’ll understand exactly why she has just won World Rugby’s Women’s XVs Player of the Year award. With her speed, style, spontaneity and sense of adventure, Kildunne excels at the parts of the game that make plenty of us first fall in love with it.

But Kildunne does talk, and talk well. Her eye for a break, she says, is just a straightforward case of fight or flight. “And I’m definitely in flight most of the time.” She has an infectious enthusiasm, summed up by her love of an old Roald Dahl quote from My Uncle Oswald which she used to have up on her wall, and which still sits at the head of her Instagram page. “If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” It comes up in just about every interview she gives.