3 weeks ago
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England forward Amy Cokayne has suggested next year's Women's Rugby World Cup will be the last edition of the tournament before she retires.
Leicester Tigers hooker Cokayne has won the Six Nations six times since making her senior debut for her country in 2015 and finished as the second-top try scorer at the 2021 World Cup, including a hat-trick against New Zealand as England lost a second successive final.
"People say you should never retire, you should wait to not get selected anymore," Cokayne, who has won 79 caps, told BBC Radio Leicester.
"I very much want to jump before I am pushed. I don't want to be that old woman out there, where people are asking 'why is she still playing?'
"I want to finish on a high. I joke with my team all the time that I'm going to retire after the World Cup.
"I don't think I'm going to quite retire then, I don't know. I haven't really put any pressure on myself over when I want to do that, but I can't imagine it'll be more than 33 [years old], max."
Cokayne, who earned her first full-time Red Roses contract in 2019, will be 29 when the World Cup takes place in England in August and September next year.
A 2020-21 top-flight champion with Harlequins, the Provost Officer in the Royal Air Force has seen the sport become one requiring players to "commit your entire life to it".
"We joke that we only get five weeks off a year and it's all in one block," she said.
"When I go on holiday, say, with my friends, I've got to do a running session four times a week and a gym session.
"They ask 'why do you do it? we're on holiday.' It's those things that differ your life.
"I'm more than happy to do that at the minute - but whether I'll be more than happy to do that when I'm in my mid-30s, I'm not so sure."
Having won the top division of the inaugural WXV in New Zealand in 2023, Cokayne has just returned from repeating the triumph in Canada.
"It's still really new and finding its feet but it was really good," she said of the three-tier competition between national teams.
"As players, the more fixtures we can get against the best teams in the world, the better.
"There was a lot of jetlag during the first week back, for sure. I was still very much living on Canada time, for a while.
"It was a bit of a shock when I came back to the dark cold of Leicester that we've had."
Leicester finished eighth out of nine in their first Premiership Women's Rugby campaign in 2023-24 and have collected one losing-bonus point from their first three matches this season.
Cokayne believes 22-year-old Tigers hooker Alana Bainbridge is one of the players who can benefit from her vast experience in the game.
"If I can help Alana to be a better hooker than me, and she's then the best and takes me out of that number two jersey, that's fine by me," Cokayne said.
"Wherever I can, giving tips and tricks, saying 'let's go out and do a session' or giving little pieces of advice - that's definitely a key part of being an older person.
"Where I am now, I understand who I am and what I have to offer.
"I've accepted that and I'm not chasing too much.
"I know what my job is, my core skills and what I have to do. It's fine-tuning those instead of trying to find myself.
"I want to help people as much as I can. I want to leave Tigers and England in the best place to be successful."
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