Mud, maul, mascara

Catherine Spencer was the captain of the England women's rugby team for three years. She scored eighteen tries for England, won six of the eight Six Nations competitions she took part in, and captained her team to three championship titles, a European cup, two Nations Cup tournament victories and the World Cup final held on home soil in 2010, which thrust women's rugby into the limelight. All of this while holding down a full time job, because the women's team, unlike the men's, did not get paid for their sport. But Catherine is also a woman who just wants to be happy, have fun and fall in love. She likes fabulous shoes, nights out, and a pint or two. She's thrown grown women across pitches around the world, but she's still hurt by crass comments, cruelty and discrimination - and women at the top of their game run into a lot of those. Mud, Maul, Mascara is an effort to reconcile alleged opposites, to show the woman behind the international sporting success. Painfully honest about the mental struggles she faced as an elite athlete, it is also warm, funny and inspirational - a book for anyone who has ever had a dream, or self-doubt, or a yearning for a really good, mud-proof mascara.