On the morning of 26/01/2025 I was on the rugby bus on the way to play an away game. I was excited about playing as I hadn’t for a while. I should also say that I was a bit nervous to play against a biological male. I was nervous because I had seen this particular player once before, on the pitch, when I wasn’t playing. It was a tough match where the transgender player caused a black eye, a rib and spine injury and one of my lovely teammates coming off the pitch crying because she was tackled so hard. 

After that previous game I had talked to some people high up in my club, asking how this is allowed? The answer I got back was, ‘yea the bond says its fine’. I didn’t see a reason why I shouldn’t trust the Nederlandse Rugby Bond, because you know, the association is there to protect the safety of its players. 

And so, I was put in as scrum half at the beginning of the second half. I only played for 5 minutes. There was a penalty which I took quickly looking for space. I ran into the opponent’s line and was held upright by two women. A maul was forming and the transgender player came in low from the left side. The transwoman grabbed my left lower leg – for the people who don’t know everything about rugby, you’re supposed to tackle two legs, and certainly not when a maul is forming – and because I was being held upright by two other women I couldn’t escape the transgenders very strong male grip. I was stuck. I looked down to see the transgender pulling at my leg. Her shoulder was just below my knee cap and her arms were wrapped round my ankle, I could not move. Keep in mind, the transplayer came in from the left side and my knee doesn’t bend that way. So the transplayer pushed her shoulder into my knee and with immense strength pulled her arms closer to herself. I then heard a massive popping sound. I screamed my lungs out. The transplayer had pulled my pretty little knee out of its socket and broke my MCL and ACL in one single movement. 

Later I heard that teammates on the pitch had to walk away with their hands over their ears because my screams sounded too painful. 

When the physio put my knee back into its socket, I had to be carried off the pitch by my teammates because the opponents club didn’t have a stretcher. As I was sitting there at the side of the pitch, time stood still. I knew it was serious, I didn’t feel connected to my knee at all, later I would find out my nerves were dead because the ligaments were completely torn apart. I understood that yesterday was way too far away and tomorrow would not look the same. 

All of the sudden I felt very alone in my own body, my knee didn’t feel like it was part of me anymore. My lower leg felt like a dead weight hanging and pulling my knee further apart. I actually named my MCL and ACL Pixie and Trixie because they didn’t feel like part of myself. I needed to name the distance between me and my knee. 

I kept going back to that moment where I felt the male strength of this transplayer. It is something that still goes through my head. It was a type of strength that I only partly ever felt while playing with the older boys in my youth. The kind of strength that women can’t match. Women do not possess that strength. I find it difficult to describe, only that the strength went over some kind of limit. When this biological male pulled my lower leg towards herself and pushed her shoulder in, it went from 70% to 200% strength. 

Look, rugby is a contact sport, we all know injuries can happen when we go on the pitch. An ACL tear is not uncommon within female athletes. Usually it happens by mis-stepping or losing your footing. I am aware that injuries happen and I would be able to make peace with it IF I got an injury from playing an all-female match. However, I cannot make peace with something that felt like an attack on my body. I can’t make peace with knowing that if the Dutch Rugby Association had protected my safety by not allowing transgenders into the women’s competition, I would not have my pretty little knee pulled out of its socket. I can’t understand how the Dutch Rugby Association can allow biological men to play in women’s rugby; a contact sport where injuries are more likely to happen.

After the match on the 26th I went to a knee specialist. He wanted to do some tests on me, and so I laid there on the treatment table staring at the ceiling. He was able to bend my knee almost 90 degrees to the left side. He didn’t want to go any further in fear of my knee popping out again. It was only possible because my MCL, the inner ligament of the knee, had completely torn through so there was nothing to resist the bending. 

The plan was to wait for my MCL to grow back together so I would only need an ACL surgery. And so I got a brace for stability and waited. While I waited for my surgery I sent out an email to every board member of the Dutch Rugby Association, telling them of what happened and asking them how it was able to happen.

A meeting was made for the beginning of March. I went into the meeting crying, because just before it started my team manager had said, ‘maybe start of the conversion with, I don’t want to be here but I feel like I have to’. He had put my emotions into words precisely. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to be tackled by a trans woman, but I knew I didn’t want this for anyone else. Biological men in our sport have an unfair advantage and are causing serious injuries.

I told my story crying and the first thing that the Dutch Rugby Association member said was; so you hadn’t played for a while, did you feel like you had more pressure to play better than normal? As if this whole thing was my fault. That really set the tone of the meeting. We talked about all kinds of things including how the Dutch Rugby Association didn’t look out for women’s safety, their duty of care, how the Dutch Rugby Association didn’t even ask players what we thought about playing with and against transplayers… We also talked about the non-existing safety measurements or rules. 

I came out of that meeting incredibly let down. It was clear to me that the Dutch Rugby Association didn’t want anything to do with this issue. They put inclusion before safety in our sport. The only thing they did do was go against the science, World Rugby, and hope nothing would happen. 

Hoped, they hoped nothing would happen. 

In my eyes that is not good enough. They had 5 whole years of figuring out a policy and they chose not to do anything at all. They chose to let this happen when they could have easily prevented it. 

Now, I will always have scars to remind me of how the Dutch Rugby Association lacked in the most important aspect of their own sport; safety. 

I’ve got three big incisions and a few small ones scattered around my pretty little knee. My doctor had to take part of my patella ligament out to turn into the ACL and he put in an extra protection layer on my MCL. He also had to put an anti-rotation protective layer on the outside, the Lemaire. The surgery went well, my doctor was very proud of his work. However, my recovery has gone a bit more difficult but that’s expected.

I’m just grateful that I’ll be able to walk my own little walk in a few months. Or that I will be able to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without crutches, and sleep without pain. It’s the little things at the moment.

I’ll keep you posted.