One of the brightest young prospects in Scottish Women’s rugby, Nicole Flynn has just been partnered up with the ideal mentor to oversee her progression. As apart of the Vodafone EmpowHER project, Flynn is teaming up with Red Roses legend Emily Scarratt, who will be her mentor during her time at University.
A first year student at the University of Edinburgh, 18-year-old Flynn is only at the infancy of her professional playing career. With just three seasons under her belt after taking up the sport at 15-years-old, Flynn has wasted no time in achieving career milestones. The versatile back is prominent at both centre and on the wing, and already has two Scottish Women’s Premiership league titles to her name as she broke onto the scene at Stirling County, a powerhouse of the women’s top flight, North of the border.
“I was very lucky to have the environment I had there.” Flynn said. “Mark Ainsworth as a coach, I think he’s very honest, if I need help he’d give me it right away, he wouldn’t beat around the bush, it was just direct.
“Just the opportunity he gave me, I’m so grateful for it and to have him. Getting to play women’s rugby and winning the Premiership at 17, not many people can even say they’ve won the Prem. I think I’m very lucky and fortunate to have had opportunities like that. Because I’m thinking would I be here today, if I didn’t get that?”
The midfielder has since been pushing from strength to strength, and achieved her first Scotland squad call-ups throughout the 2024 Women’s Six Nations. Speaking exclusivly to Ruck, the University of Edinburgh student discussed her first few interactions with Scarratt, as the pair met on her campus in the Scottish capital.
“The experience that she has, I can ask her about anything she’s been through. When I was going to Scotland, I had sent over some clips to her. So that was like, all about running lines, and I asked, ‘can you help me out here, and I brought it into Scotland’. It really changed the way I was playing and training. Even when I was in camp, I was messaging her like, ‘how do you cope with these certain things, in a national type environment?’
“She was like, ‘yeah, don’t worry’, that kind of stuff. The feedback related to what I was going through. Because she knew exactly what I was going through. So, that was really cool.”
“So, I had to do the big jump and email a famous person! So that was really hard for me. But no, we were emailing and we decided that just for like, quickness, so we can both get the best out of it we’d use WhatsApp. So if I need help, I just send her a message and I get a really quick reply. But it saves the whole hassle of having to, ‘oh, when are you free for a call?’
“We do still catch up. But it works a lot easier that way, if I want, something really fast, or, if I’ve got training the next day. I get and I get it back really fast as well.”
After impressive performances for Stirling County in the SWP and for Edinburgh in the Celtic Challenge, Flynn was called up by Scotland Women head coach Bryan Easson for national squad duties. Despite being overjoyed to train with the Scotland squad, Flynn discussed how the latest Guinness Women’s Six Nations presented quite the daunting challenge.
Despite not gaining on-field minutes as of yet, Flynn was twice named by Easson on the match day squads. Warming up and running the reps against France and Ireland, the talented youngster expressed how valuable the match day experiences were for the fixtures against France and Ireland.
“I think it’s always really daunting, going into a new environment. But everyone was really nice to me, it made it a lot easier. I knew quite a few of the girls because I played with them at the Celtic Challenge, like Lisa Thomson, Emma Orr, Caity Mattison, and I just learned so much from them.
“Even if we were in even in camp, and I needed help, I would be like, ‘Oh, are you free for a chat?’, and they would help me right away. Even on the pitch, if I was not feeling up to it, or I was confused about something they’d be like, ‘right, it’s fine. Just do this, and it made it so much easier.’
“Especially having like Celtic challenge this year, kind of bridging the gap between like, uni rugby and like that level. It made the transfer a lot easier, just playing a wee bit higher up than you usually do.”
The Celtic Challenge is one of the newest competitions in women’s rugby, which has the goal of bridging the gap between club level and international test standard. The competition is made up of six teams, as two sides from Scotland (Edinburgh Rugby & Glasgow Warriors), Wales (Brython Thunder & Gwalia Lightning) and Ireland (Wolfhounds & Clovers), compete in round-robin competition.
This coming December will see the third iteration of the tournament take place, with the format expanded from five rounds to 10. Each team will now play every other side home and away, and Flynn is delighted at the increased opportunity to showcase her talents. After breaking into the Edinburgh Rugby set-up, the versatile back is eyeing up the winter to once again showcase her skills ahead of 2025 Women’s Six Nations selection.
“I think it was really good, it was a good platform to show what players can do, especially at that higher level, a bigger stage. We had Alex (Stewart), Merryn (Gunderson), Cieron (Bell), and we had some like day trainers as well like Molly Poolman, Freya Walker, Hannah Walker, Natasha Logan, all those players played so well and Celtic challenge, and we got reward out of it.
“It made us feel seen. Getting brought up (to Scotland) because of good performances, it’s just like showing how much more people we can get there. Like Scottish women’s rugby is growing, and hopefully next year it does the same and we get even more people in like before the World Cup.
“It’s obviously quite hard because I may have to compete against some of these people, but I’m hoping that we just keep growing, and it does really good for rugby even like and Wales and Ireland as well.
“Look at Ireland, they all their players are playing in the Celtic Challenge and they’ve just done probably their best Six Nations in I don’t know how long. It’s shown everywhere, it’s not just here.”
A proud scholar at the University of Edinburgh, Flynn’s institution is one of three UK Universities involved with the EmpowHER Project. In a push to bridge the gap from university rugby to the professional game in England, Wales and Scotland, Edinburgh University is joined by Durham and Cardiff, with the trio recognised as leading academic strongholds for women’s rugby.
Each of the three universities has received a bursary from Vodafone, to help elevate their women’s rugby sides. The institutions also have been granted access to the trailblazing Vodafone Player Connect App, which enables a better understanding of the women’s rugby players from a physiological perspective. Discussing the importance of the EmpowHER project’s additional bonuses, Flynn added;
“I think we’re very grateful for the bursary, player connect, these opportunities, Scaz (Emily Scarratt) is right here behind me! I think we’re very fortunate for it. We (Edinburgh University) used the bursary we got, for new electrical equipment, to help us better review our games.
“Everyone uses the app, it’s for monitoring are mental and physical health. We get to track our menstrual cycle on it, and you don’t really get that kind of stuff, usually it’s often overlooked for women’s sport.
“Everything here is really pushing our development as a university, especially when universities tend to be feeders for bigger teams. The more that we get invested into us, the more we can get out of it. So, more development and more opportunities.”
Looking back at the Scottish national women’s team, and Easson’s side are amongst the leading nations closing in on England and France. The Women’s Six Nations has previously been an Anglo-French two horse race, yet the recent tournament was regarded as one of the closest for the chasing pack. Scotland have certainly improved in recent seasons, and have in no doubt been helped by getting a taste for silverware in WXV.
The global WXV competition fills the Autumn calendar in the women’s game, with three tiers of competition showcasing level fixtures. Scotland won the WXV2 title last year, after racking up a trio of wins over South Africa, the United States and Japan. Scotland head to the land of the Springboks this coming Autumn, and Flynn would like nothing more than to be apart of the side. However, the 18-year-old recognises how she may have to be patient when the selection process comes around.
“I would love to go, but it’s just who’s there you know. There’s so many good players now, like we’ve got a lot of depth in the squad. So if I get to go, I get to go, if I don’t get to go, I’ll work hard to get to go next time.”