Shaunagh Brown believes Jo Yapp’s sense of perspective makes her the ‘perfect’ person to lead the British & Irish Lions Women’s inaugural touring squad.
The 46-year-old, who won 70 England caps as a player, led Australia to the quarter-finals of last year’s World Cup and has also held coaching roles with Worcester Warriors and the Barbarians. It was announced last week that Yapp will be the Lions Women’s first-ever head coach when they head to New Zealand next year, beating off competition from Red Roses head coach John Mitchell, among others.
Many expected Mitchell’s familiarity with the likely number of England’s World Cup winners in the squad to give him the edge but ex-Red Roses prop Brown believes Yapp’s inter-personal skills make her a shrewd appointment.
“I’ve never been coached by her but if you speak to her directly, or to anyone who has been coached by her or been around her, she is an incredible people person,” Brown said.
“It is finally being recognised across the game that you can’t just focus on performance on the pitch. How you bring your team together culturally is so important to how they perform on the pitch, and how players feel as a person off the pitch has a direct impact on how they perform on it.
View 2 ImagesBrown was speaking at the home of her first club, Medway RFC, to help launch Royal London’s annual Championing Women and Girls’ Rugby Award
“For this to be the first tour bringing four nations together, players who are going at it and tearing each other’s heads off every year in the Six Nations, and four very strong home nations in terms of heart, culture, belief and passion, that will be the first challenge. Jo Yapp will be gifted a group of world-class players, that’s a given. The challenge will be bringing them together to make them unstoppable. For me, Jo Yapp is the perfect person to do that.
“Her path has been so varied that she can look at it from different angles. She won’t have the bias of knowing so much more about certain players. That perspective will be the most important thing as she has such a wide variety of it.”
England wrapped up their eighth consecutive Women’s Six Nations title in May and Yapp’s compatriots are expected to make up the bulk of the squad. But Brown, who hung up her boots for good in 2024 after coming out of retirement the previous year, was impressed by Ireland’s spring showings and believes they could have representation in the pack.
“My standouts were the whole Irish back row – Aoife Wafer, Erin King and Britt Hogan,” she said. “As a unit of three but also as individuals, they have such a wide variety of skillsets between them.
“They are not just ‘crash it up the middle’ ball carriers. They can pass, make decisions, take it down the wing, run on the edge, they can do all of what you need modern day back-rowers to do.”
Brown was speaking at the home of her first club, Medway RFC, to help launch Royal London’s annual Championing Women and Girls’ Rugby Award. The initiative, now in its third year, recognises four clubs per year, one chosen from each home union, who receive a trophy plus a £10,000 grant to invest in their women and girls’ programmes.
Guisborough and Lancaster Lionesses have been the prior English recipients of the grants and Brown, who sits on the judging panel, said: “The impact has been incredible to see but also tangible.
“It is nice to see a direct outcome of the money put in by Royal London, whereas in some bigger clubs it might just get consumed as part of their budget. The standout criteria for us is seeing where it is spent. The whole point of this is about legacy and the future of the women’s game, giving women and girls what they need to continue the game’s evolution.
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“The first year, we had just under 130 applications, the following year was around 250. If we can get close to doubling that number again, that would be brilliant. It’s more reading for us but it’s all good stuff!”
Royal London, the only Founding Partner of The British & Irish Lions Women’s rugby team, has announced that applications are open for its annual Championing Women and Girls’ Rugby Award. Applications are open until 12pm on Monday 20 July 2026 via the Lions website