The #Icare movement was started by Bristol Bears tighthead Stef Evans through her clothing brand Ruggette RFC and she has been moved by the millions of responses her campaign has received.
Canadian-born Evans started the movement in reaction to Instagram trolls saying they didn't care the Women's Six Nations was being postponed. The 33-year-old said her campaign has highlighted how the rugby community is like a family.
“I've had so many amazing conversations but a lot of them have been repetitive as people have said the same thing along those exact lines of how it's a family. The way people have reacted, it's almost as if someone has hurt or offended or wronged your family member or your teammate.
“There's something magic about the rugby community in that we feel so strongly about each other and we look at everybody in our community as a family.
“When somebody in that family needs help or is wronged that's the level of passion people bring to defend that person. I think that's really beautiful and really moving.”
The Women's Six Nations is not the only competition to be disrupted by Covid as the Premier 15s has recently had a two-week suspension due to the pandemic.
Evans, who has also played for Richmond and Beantown RFC, says Bears have taken the break in their stride.
“These sorts of things are out of your control, you know you can't plan for a pandemic. No one has lived through this sort of thing exactly before so you're never going to be able to have this perfect prediction of what to do,” she said.
“But I do believe fundamentally you can look at it in two different ways. You can look at it as something that's negative or you can try and find the positive in it. The positive is you have more time to train. You have more time to practise things. You can work on your fitness in a way you can't when you have games.
“So there are a lot of advantages and positives if you look for them in these sorts of things and we certainly have and we certainly are doing that.”
So far this season Bears are seventh after recording just three wins but Evans is excited to see what the ‘resilient' club can produce.
“It sounds cheesy but you can really feel how much everybody cares about our goals and where we want to go as a team and what we want to achieve as a group.
“The entire set up and the entire playing group just has so much heart, so much resilience and I'm so excited to see what we manage to produce from that because it gives you a feeling like you could probably do anything. I really do think we are yet to show a fraction of what we're capable of as a group.”
SARAH RENDELL
