Molly Wright admits that it’s been personally frustrating to have rugby lock down just as she was making inroads into the Scotland team, but she thinks she’s lucky and what she sees on a daily basis at work puts it all into perspective.
The 29-year-old Watsonians hooker, who scored a try on her Scotland debut against Spain in January, is a physiotherapist with the NHS but has been redeployed to a rehab unit at an Edinburgh hospital during the coronavirus pandemic.
That means she’s dealing with patients slowly recovering from the exhaustion caused by battling Covid-19, as well as those fighting back from other illnesses or surgeries.
“Normally I’d be at a clinic taking appointments, but all of those have been cancelled,” she said. “Instead I was redeployed to a rehab ward, helping those who are recovering but not quite able to go home yet.
“It’s difficult, but it’s also rewarding to have an opportunity to make a difference for people in a time that is a bit strange. My role there is to get people stronger and fitter, and in many cases to help them to relearn to walk.
“We deal with Covid patients and those recovering from it, but equally we have a huge amount of patients who would have normally been in hospital because they’ve been unwell for other reasons. Yes, we see patients who have had the virus but there are still plenty of other conditions we have to manage.
“It’s hard for us to know what will happen long-term with Covid because there’s always new research coming out, but from a therapist point of view the ones we’re dealing with are worse anyway because they couldn’t go straight home from hospital. They are a lot more tired and it takes a lot longer for them to recover to a stage they’re able to go home.”
Having seen all of it, she still thinks she’s lucky even if her rugby international aspirations have been put on hold.
“I’m still at work so I still have some structure in my days which I appreciate makes me quite lucky,” she said. “I’ve been programmed to do work so my mornings are spent doing resistance training, then I go to work, then later on I do my running. It’s different that I don’t see my pals and don’t train with the girls, but still pretty structured.
“It is disappointing on a personal level that it’s all stopped, but to be honest this pandemic is far bigger than rugby and my career in rugby. It’s just been put on hold, really.”
The biggest difficulty is the lifestyle change from spending most of her time in a big group of friends training to “not being about to see them, not being able to see anyone.
“It does make training challenging to keep motivated and keep working,” she continued. “But it’s not so bad because we’re such a tight knit unit, and we work together when we can.
“I can’t say what happened in previous years, but I came in halfway through the season and they have just absorbed me into this family. Even now, everybody is here for each other, there is a Zoom training session with Jade Konkel every single day if you wanted!
“It is still a wonderful team to be part of, even though we are not seeing as much of each other as we’d like.”
Molly came back to rugby – she played in New Zealand – basically to widen her friend base when she came to work in Edinburgh and before she knew it, she was in Scotland colours.
“I moved to London from New Zealand, but I was always looking for a way to move to Scotland,” she said. “I now see Scotland as my home. I’ve set up my life here, I can see out my career here – rugby or not.
“My family have probably got blue hearts now! My mum has never been a big fan of rugby but she’s Scotland’s biggest fan now and my dad was very emotional at my first cap. They both got up in the middle of the night to watch, it was very special for them and for me.
“The Women’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is a target, you might imagine. That would probably be the only opportunity my folks will get to see me play at this level, rather than on a screen. So that would be a pretty special moment.”
But there are more important things than even that to deal with first, she stresses.
“I’m not sure that this virus is going anywhere quickly and I wouldn’t want to rush back to rugby just for my own enjoyment of the game,” she said.
“This disease has taken so many lives already and I wouldn’t want to be a part of spreading it.
“Would I like rugby to come back? Yes, but only when it is safe to do so, and I know that when that time comes we will have the support to adequately prepare to return to the game in whatever form that might be.”