Wooden said, \u201c\u2018Look, I think you have the potential to be a great sevens player. Do you want to come and do a summer with us?\u2019 And at the time, it was early years at Sale. You were paid a match fee, but you weren\u2019t contracted. So I was like, \u2018Sounds like a good way to spend the summer, in the middle of Arkansas.\u2019 Definitely the fittest I\u2019ve ever been in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, in the blistering south, the hottest, \u201cJust sweating everything off.\u201d It paid off. Perris-Redding had the talent as well as the fitness and she had something else in her pocket. Born in Detroit, where her parents both worked for Ford, she qualified to play for the Eagles.<\/p>\n
Her spell at the ARPTC focused on sevens. \u201cWorking with Julie, and then Hannah Stolba<\/a>, Rysz Chadwick<\/a>, who\u2019s with Life University, [in Georgia] some really good coaches,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it was really good for me. That was the first time where I think I was like, \u2018Oh, I want more from my rugby.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It turned out her future lay in 15s. Now a full-time Premiership Women\u2019s Rugby pro, the combative flanker has been to two World Cups and leads the Eagles with Erica Jarrell-Searcy<\/a>, a second row and a clubmate in England. Perris-Redding\u2019s twin, scrum-half India, was forced by injury to retire<\/a> but Perris-Redding has overcome her own serious knee problem to play on, in her prime at 29.<\/p>\n Georgie Perris-Redding takes the ball into contact against Australia. Photograph: Griff Hastings\/USA Rugby<\/p>\n Her US call-up came in 2022 from then-coach Rob Cain, who was also working at Saracens. Sale \u201cplayed Sarries [and] a couple of days later I got a call. He was like, \u2018Look, I think you have real potential. I\u2019m going to ask you to come into a camp soon.\u2019 That camp happened to be in Wales\u2026 and I never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n Perris-Redding played against Wales with a host of highly experienced Eagles, all-time greats Alev Kelter and Alycia Washington<\/a> among them. The US won, 31-23 in Llanelli<\/a>. That was a non-cap World Cup warm-up but Perris-Redding\u2019s first full cap came that June, against Canada in New Zealand<\/a>. Five years on, combining UK club rugby with US internationals \u201cdoes have its difficulties but\u2026 one thing that\u2019s fantastic is I\u2019ve noticed how much easier it\u2019s getting, and how cohesive it is between USA and Sale. The communication is great. They work well together, and\u2026 England have paved the way, and this is what it needs to look like. We\u2019re starting to see massive improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n England are runaway world leaders, winning 39 games in a row before being held by Canada last week, a 26-26 thriller<\/a>. Perris-Redding\u2019s Eagles are indeed improving, squaring a series with South Africa in the summer and kicking off the autumn with a 40-36 win in Dublin<\/a> against an Ireland team then ranked<\/a> three spots higher, now just one, fifth to sixth. Perris-Redding scored the Eagles\u2019 first try, from short range, as they overcame a familiar slow start.<\/p>\n A \u201cbig focus for [head coach] Jack [Hanratty] is our rugby IQ,\u201d Perris-Redding said. \u201cHow we can be that clinical, and how we can wake up from minute one, and that\u2019s something that we\u2019re really focusing on this week. Because I \u2026 think we can say we had a good build-up to that Ireland game. We were ready. We were well prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet they still conceded three quick tries. On Saturday, Perris-Redding wants her team to focus on \u201cfixing those small details, making sure that we don\u2019t concede like we did in those first 20 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cI think with it being a short turnaround, it\u2019s definitely something that we\u2019ve had to take into consideration in terms of recovery and load. But I think the more time we have together, especially with the young girls coming through, playing key positions, key roles, moving us around the field, I think we\u2019re getting to know Nina and Bella better and what they need, and vice versa. So hopefully, that all has a positive impact going into Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to The Breakdown<\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Nina Mason and Bella Vogel are young backs making their mark. Mason, who plays in the back three, won her first cap last weekend. Vogel, a fly-half, made her debut this summer aged 19. Both out of Pennsylvania, both still at college at Life, they are startlingly talented signs that something is shifting in American rugby, girls and boys playing rather than teens finding the game at college as most have done for decades. Rugby\u2019s roots are reaching deeper.<\/p>\n Perris-Redding played with the boys at Crewe & Nantwich, which has a knack for producing talented twins, having nurtured England back-rows Tom and Ben Curry<\/a>. But Perris-Redding said she only really found her stride towards the end of her teens, having excelled in athletics. She professes herself \u201cabsolutely jealous\u201d of Vogel\u2019s fast start.<\/p>\n \u201cI can only imagine what it feels like being that skilled in the way she sees the game, which is hard because you don\u2019t grow up watching rugby [in the US], and I feel like that\u2019s how a lot of people develop their IQ at a young age over here, especially. Honestly, the way she sees the game, the way she directs it, is fantastic and scary because she is so young and she\u2019s only going to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n Wales thrashed South Africa last week, 50-19<\/a>, putting the Americans on notice. In October the Eagles will face Italy in Nashville, Tennessee, and Mansfield, Texas, before a marquee game against England in Harrison, New Jersey, a double bill with the Eagles men against an Australia XV. Perris-Redding insisted her team was not looking past the next challenge in Cardiff.<\/p>\n \u201cAll we spoke about was Ireland the first week. All we speak about now is Wales, and that\u2019ll be the same for Italy. I think the coaches have done a great job in really breaking it down and allowing us as players to focus on what\u2019s important right now. We know that the challenge of England is coming, but I think by then we\u2019ll be very excited to give that a good go. I think this is the best rugby we\u2019ve played for a while and England are getting tested now, so I think it\u2019s a good time to go out there and play them.\u201d<\/p>\n Wales v USA will be broadcast<\/a> in the US on Paramount+, in the UK on BBC iPlayer and BBC Wales, and around the world on RugbyPass TV. Martin Pengelly writes about rugby in America on Substack at The National Maul<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a long way from Crewe & Nantwich RUFC to Little Rock, Arkansas, but five years ago Georgie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-782162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790339891_164_500.jpg\")
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