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HEATHER FISHER BELIEVES that people have two choices in life.
“It’s pretty simple,” the Women’s Six Nations and World Cup winner states. “You can either say ‘yes’ and give it a go, or just don’t show up. I decided to go for it.”
With the men’s Guinness Six Nations in full flow and excitement building towards Ireland’s crucial game at Twickenham next weekend, we caught up with the England international.
An inspirational figure, Fisher has appeared at five Rugby World Cups (7s and 15s), the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. She has also competed at international level in bobsleigh.
But it is off the field where she has faced her toughest battles — overcoming anorexia, a career-threatening back injury and hair loss due to alopecia — to thrive as a strength & conditioning coach, mentor and guest speaker while also continuing to play top-level sport.
The 35-year-old appeared on The Line-Out, Virgin Media’s new rugby and entertainment show on air throughout this year’s Guinness Six Nations, alongside Ireland rugby hero Peter Stringer and comedian Andrew Ryan last week, and took some time out afterwards to speak to us about her life.
As a child at school, Heather admits finding it difficult to fit in. She always felt a little different. Sport was a release, however, and it soon became clear that she was a born competitor.
“From a very young age, my dream was to be an athlete,” Heather explains. “I didn’t really think of anything else.
“I knew I could be a professional athlete, I just didn’t know what sport it would be in. I feel like I probably could have ended up in a number of different sports.”
The Birmingham native discovered rugby and began catching the eye as a talented flanker. But an ongoing struggle with anorexia meant her performances were often inconsistent.
“As I was growing up, my coach would pull me aside and say ‘Fish, you’re a great back-row player but we can’t work out as a staff how you can be an amazing player and then not on it’,” she says.
And it was all down to my relationship with food. I was up and down like a yo-yo. I don’t think it ever leaves you.”
Despite dealing with an eating disorder, Fisher’s rugby career continued to progress. Seemingly on the verge of an international cap, she was dropped by England for, in her words, “being cocky”.
A chance meeting in a Cardiff coffee shop while at university then saw her sporting career take an unusual turn.
“Someone came up to me and said ‘you look pretty strong, what do you do?’. It turns out she competed in the skeleton and they were looking for athletes to take part in the bobsleigh at the next Olympics.
“That was probably the making of my rugby career. It was a pretty amazing experience and I wouldn’t be the athlete I am today if it wasn’t for that.”
Fisher went on to compete in bobsleigh on the European circuit, before burning herself out and opting to return to rugby in the hope of competing at the Olympics in the 7s competition.
In the summer of 2011 — shortly after lifting the Six Nations trophy — an on-field injury threatened to end her career altogether. Landing awkwardly after catching a ball mid-air, Heather suffered four fractures to her back and was put into a brace from her neck to her waist.
Two gruelling years of rehabilitation followed and there were genuine fears that she would never be able to play again.
“There was a time that I thought I wouldn’t come back,” she admits. “That’s when I decided to do my Masters, start mentoring younger people and open up my gym. I realised there is more to life than rugby. I’m about balance and now I’ve got loads of things on because of what happened.
I realised you can work your ass off for something and it can be taken from you like that.”
Heather also had to deal with severe hair loss as her alopecia worsened around that time.
“Losing my hair was probably the biggest thing I’ve ever gone through.” she tells. “When it happened, I lost some of my personality. I didn’t feel I could go out of the house, I felt ashamed.
“I find it really hard to talk about because it brings those emotions back, but I try to deal with it. It’s something that I have learned to accept and grow with, but I still challenge it.
“I had to make it work for me. If I can’t do my hair everyday, I change my hat, change my glasses, change my socks. That’s the way I roll.”
Remarkably, the setbacks only spurred her on even more and Fisher got to fulfill a lifelong ambition by competing at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
“For me, it has been a dream since I was 13 years old. I feel very fortunate to be an Olympian, and to be able to do it again a second time [later this year] sends shivers down my body.
“World Cups have never meant as much as the Olympics for me. It is the pinnacle.”
It has been quite the journey and Heather has shown immense strength of character throughout the good times and the bad.
“I’ve had battles but luckily I feel like I’ve had the courage to fight and survive them. I won’t let anything beat me.
“I take things in my stride and I’m better under pressure. If there is no pressure, I feel a bit lost. With what I’ve gone through, I don’t know any different.”
Heather has been concentrating on playing 7s in recent years, having called time on her career in the 15s game. While England’s men’s team surprisingly lost out to France on the opening weekend of the Guinness Six Nations, her former side currently sit top of the Women’s Six Nations table after their barnstorming 53-0 victory over Scotland.
These days, Fisher is regularly invited to guest speak at events, where she will tell her unique story and offer this bit of advice.
“Be true to who you are,” she ends. “I honestly believe in my heart that you can overcome anything and I don’t believe in excuses.
“It’s a total mindset shift that is needed. My message to anyone is to be true to who you are, be brave and don’t let anyone beat you because you’ve only got two choices.”
The Line-Out airs at 10pm on Virgin Media One every Thursday throughout the Guinness Six Nations. This week, the guests will include Irish rugby great Paul O’Connell and current Ireland international Joey Carbery. If you miss out, you can catch up on the Virgin Media Player. Every Guinness Six Nations game will also be shown live on Virgin Media Television. Please drink responsibly. To learn more, visit drinkaware.ie.
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Who makes this kinda stuff up? I really don’t understand the mentality of the type of people who would go out of their way to play on people’s fears with a view to stealing from them (information, bank details, whatever).
@lambda sensor: I agree, but if it is a text message it should have a source number so the telephone operators should be able to pass on the information to the gardai. I assume it is an offence to impersonate a government or state (or any) organisation.
Jail without access to the internet for the duration to these scam individuals. If coming from abroad then block the foriegn operators numbers from all texts and calls to Ireland
The telecom operators can be very quick to protect themselves but are lacking in protecting it’s customs. Bet they could stop all texts with the link in it and other scams but for some reason they seem slow to act. Yet social media platforms can stop the spread and remove stuff if needed.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: There are many SIM card providers out there now so it would be very difficult to track things back to the source. With GSM cards being so cheap and easy to use plus the availability of GSM application SIM cards it is a very simple thing to setup a PC controlled system which will spit out messages all day. Those messages are not even sent from a standard off the shelf phone.
@David Corrigan:
If it is a foreign network, block the whole network and tell them to figure it out…
@David Corrigan: I have no doubt that they are almost certainly run from a device and not single composed messages in most cases and might be hard to trace back – ISP logs could help. But even if the guys could not be stopped the mobile operators could stop messages based upon content unless they have now encrypted plain text messages. We can then go to the ISP to block access to that link. Or do what they did in the USA, do a DNS redirected.
When telecom sites were replicated and phishing sites created to mimic them these sites were blocked or unhosted within 30 minutes – so it is possible to block access and prevent too much harm being done.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: it can be configured in a way that you only see the name of the sender (the name they give themselves) like when you get a text message from your bank with a one time password to login. The sender in turn can be located abroad.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: the whole world is seeing cyber theft and scams it is not unique to telcos that you allege ( wrongly ) that are sitting back and not taking action – there is an enormous amount of money and effort and resources spent by operators to try shut down scams – unfortunately once the the internet has been opened to all the smartfones then these challenges get more and more difficult – it is not as straight forward as blocking a call ( I work in this field )
Surely the network operators can block this fake information from circulating .
@Eug J Cummins: Would be next to impossible to do this.
@David Corrigan: block mass commercial texts that use the term HSE that are not from an authorised sender
@Eug J Cummins: They can (and used to many years ago) but wont now.
It would actually be straightforward, but would block advertising companies. These are sent by international SMS relays, and it would take 5 seconds to turn on a block if no number or name present.
Ah any close contact of a positive case would know this is fake . 24 days not one call from HSE. Luckily I contacted my contacts myself . Everybody in same circumstances should do it . If you know you’ve been exposed , contact the people you were with and tell them to quarantine and call their GP. Same if you’re a positive case . Otherwise it’s “ waiting for Godot”.
Those f@#£ers should be shot with balls of there own s#%T
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