Trekking above 5000m on Mount Everest is not the hardest physical challenge that new Queensland Rugby Union Vice-President Jenny Gillett has put herself through.
It was making a comeback to rugby at 42 as a mum and preparing each week to face 19 and 20-year-olds with seemingly endless energy.
Gillett looks back fondly at both experiences and realises they stemmed from searching for another challenge after finishing her playing career for the first time.
It’s also why she is such an advocate of women’s rugby and all the bonuses that being part of the rugby family bring apart from simply playing the game.
“I loved the camaraderie and friendships from playing in a team. I had some brilliant experiences and found some of my closest friends who still are today,” Gillett said.
“To now have an eight-year-old daughter (Florence) loving the team stuff and building confidence through the game is wonderful.
“A lot is spoken about the ‘golden runway’ for players with World Cups and the 2032 Brisbane Olympics but it’s that for kids as well with what they’ll be able to experience and see with their own eyes.
“I was stoked to see the Queensland women’s team perform so well this season. One of the first things I’ve appreciated in my new QRU role is how included the women are within the Reds generally.
“There’s more room for support and the recruitment and retention of juniors, girls and boys, is a key area for rugby.
“It’s those areas like young girls being able to go to a girls-only rugby clinic or the training of more female coaches.”
To the QRU Vice-President’s role, Gillett also brings her professional acumen and networking skills from more than two decades in the Queensland property and construction industry.
She is the head of JLL’s Project and Development Services in Queensland.
“I hope to broaden the horizons with the way the construction world meets the rugby world,” Gillett said.
She started playing rugby in the mid-1990s when women’s rugby was in its infancy in Queensland.
As a flying winger, she featured in Brothers’ only two premierships in 1998 and 2001 and was named in the club’s Team of the Quarter-Century.
She will always have a bone to pick with Brothers Life Member and rugby historian Anthony McDermott.
“I was happily retired for eight or so years and ‘Macca’ threw this number at me. You’ve played 90 games…only 10 more to be the first woman at Brothers to reach 100,” Gillett recalled.
As a one-off, in the intervening years, Gillett had headed to Nepal to trek. Snow, ice, living out of huts…she’d made it past 5000m.
You can’t do that so she did.
“OK, one last season,” she explained with the same determination.
“I’ve trekked to Base Camp on Mount Everest but that season, at 42 with a two-year-old daughter, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“It was the training. It was backing up to play against fit 19 and 20-year-olds, it was trying to get selected every week.
“I’d be so sore on a Sunday morning that it’d take 10 minutes to go 4m to my daughter’s bedroom.
“There were only 10 games in the season so I had to be selected every bloody game to get spot-on 100 games.”
The friends and family around her when she did notch Game 100 at Crosby Park in 2018 was a priceless moment. She ran on, with her daughter on her hip, through a guard of honour of clubmates and friends. She was wearing the No.2 jersey after starting her rugby life as a fleet-footed winger two decades before.
Queensland and Brothers legend Paul McLean presented her with her 100-Game honour cap.
The QRU Vice-President will definitely bring passion to her new role and a sharp mind to help find the right support to enhance women’s rugby and other rugby porjects.
