Hard Game, Gentle Heart: How Rugby Became the Soul of Die Trying

Before 2024, rugby had hardly touched my life. I’d brushed against it twice, both times through Welshmen. The first was my physics teacher when I was eighteen, a man who loved the game so much he brought it into the classroom. He taught us mechanics through the trajectory of a rugby ball kicked by Ieuan Evans at Cardiff Arms Park — a lesson that stayed with me long after I left school.

The second was a Welshman I dated in the 1990s. Back then it was the Five Nations, and I found myself in a Twickenham pub watching matches with him. I didn’t fully understand the game, but I understood the pride. Welsh rugby meant something deep to him, something cultural, something inherited.

And then, decades later, I met Ben.

Meet the man who bought rugby into my life. Us on tour in Grenada

We met in 2024 — he was 59, I was 54 — and one of the first things that struck me was the way he spoke about rugby. Not just with passion, but with a kind of reverence. Having been a rower, I understood the bond of teamwork and the way sport shapes you. But the way Ben talked about rugby was different. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was belonging.

Ben had played Union and League, Sevens and Tens, and even hockey before rugby. He carried himself with the rough, tough aura of someone forged in the hard‑contact version of the sport. But age and injury had changed his path. With a snapped ACL, he no longer plays contact rugby. Instead, he straps up and takes to the pitch in walking rugby, proof that even without an ACL, the game still has a place for him.

I was amazed. First that walking rugby even existed, and second that he embraced a non‑contact version of something so famously aggressive. But he did. And he loved it.

I went to watch him play at a festival in Burgess Hill. The welcome from the Esher Walking Rugby team, the atmosphere, the joy of seeing this new man in my life light up on the pitch, it all drew me in. He played brilliantly, and I was urged to try it myself. Men and women play together, so I joined him at the next training session.

As an outsider, I’d always thought rugby was brute force over brain. I didn’t think it would suit me, someone who thrives on intellectual challenge and physical strength, not punishing contact. I was wrong. Walking rugby demanded strategy, hand‑eye coordination, stamina and quick thinking. It was exactly the kind of challenge I love.

When I met Ben, I was recovering from my own snapped ACL and a deep root meniscus tear. Running was impossible, cycling was painful, and I was frustrated at not being able to raise my heart rate. Walking rugby gave me that outlet while I waited for surgery. It gave me back movement, competition and the sense of belonging to a team.

Being welcomed into that world, I realised something important.

Rugby is hard — physically, emotionally, historically. But it is also gentle. It is built on values that are lived, not spoken: tradition, loyalty, honour, respect. I saw those values in the people I met. I felt them in the way I was welcomed. And I carried them with me when I sat down to write Die Trying. I really wanted to honour the game and the people who played it.

The acknowledgements in the book say:

“As a current Walking Rugby member and one of the bar staff at Esher Rugby Club, I am grateful to have been welcomed into the rugby world with the love and inclusion that only rugby seems to know.”

That’s the truth of it. Rugby didn’t just give me a setting. It gave me a community. It gave me a world. It gave me a story.

And Die Trying was born from that world — from its hardness, its gentleness, its contradictions and its unwavering values.

Next week, I’ll be sharing how those values shaped the crime fiction itself — and how I wrote a murder story inside a world built on honour.

Have a great week,

Helen x