Aviva Premiership
Female coach at Premiership club a 'matter of time'
ESPN Staff
June 22, 2014
Giselle Mather poses for a portrait, Sunbury-on-Thames, August 23, 2011
Giselle Mather heads up London Irish's academy © Getty Images
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A female head coach at an Aviva Premiership club is "just a matter of time", according to one of the game's leading women.

London Irish academy manager Giselle Mather said she was convinced a woman would soon be coaching an elite side, but that it needed courageous administrators at the top of the game to bring women through.

"You need someone with shoulders broad enough to take all the comments," Mather told the Rugby Paper. "I had someone like that in [former Irish coach] Toby Booth.

"He judged me by what he saw, how I worked, how I saw the game and didn't see that I was female doing it. He didn't care what people thought and for the first few females to get on you need innovators prepared to do the same.

"It will happen. They thought we'd never have a female Prime Minister."

Mather, who is the only woman to hold a level four RFU coaching qualification, dismissed ideas that women coaches would be disadvantaged by not having played to Premiership standards.

"Stuart Lancaster didn't play at the highest level but he is a great communicator who has done an amazing job of turning England around having worked at all levels of the game," she said.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd

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