Given she can deadlift the combined equivalent of Ellis Genge and Marcus Smith, it is little wonder Sarah Bern’s raw strength and mobility have earned her widespread praise as a world-class tighthead prop.
“It’s flattering to hear, but you can’t believe the hype or there’s a risk that you stop working hard, get complacent or entitled,” Bern tells Telegraph Sport. “Tightheads in the women’s game can still be super athletic – you can make it whatever you want it to be. It’s a lovely place to be in women’s sport, because we don’t have to mirror the men’s game.”
It is this latter point that Bern wants to emphasise. She is keen to address the furore that followed her England side’s 67-12 annihilation of Wales in the Women’s Six Nations last weekend, when she invited her Bristol Bears team-mate Jasmine Joyce-Butchers to take part in a TikTok dance during the BBC’s post-match coverage.
The Wales full-back found herself at the centre of a social media storm, with many questioning the three-time Olympian’s professionalism and, given the optics, whether the likes of Jac Morgan would have done such a thing if they had been thumped by such a colossal margin.
“It’s not men’s rugby and we’re not trying to be men’s rugby,” insists Bern. “I’m in massive support of Jaz. She’s incredibly hard-working, she’s fun and light-hearted off the pitch. I’m the same. If I’m too focused on rugby or I’m too tunnel vision, I actually don’t play as well as I would like or people expect because it becomes too small of a world.
“We just want to show personality. Also, the BBC asked us to do it! Nobody has ever done that before so we were like, ‘Let’s give it a go and see what happens’. We can learn and grow from it. If we don’t try things like that, we’re never going to grow the sport. Now it’s started a conversation. It’s getting eyeballs on the game. And I guarantee more people will say, ‘Did you see those two rugby players?’ And they then watch the game.”
When you consider the clip in question has been viewed almost four million times on X alone, Bern makes a valid point. The week previous, a clip of her wearing headphones and dancing with fans after England’s opening-round win over Italy also went viral.
