Why this photo of Red Roses star Abbie Ward and her daughter hits so hard

I’d hardly finished my coffee or opened my emails this morning, when my editor emailed me an image that she said had “undone” her. I clicked: Abbie Ward, of the England women’s rugby team, celebrating the World Cup win at Twickenham with her two-year-old daughter, Hallie, in her arms, taking it all in.

I could instantly see why my editor was moved. You don’t have to be a rugby fan to find this image powerful - it's another milestone for women’s sport, every bit as iconic as the image of Chloe Kelly swinging her shirt around her head after scoring the winning goal for England against Germany in the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 final.

It's not just a photograph of a little girl watching her mother lift a trophy in front of a record-breaking crowd - it's a snapshot of a world in which your mum playing rugby for England is normal.

Of course, it's important not to over-celebrate what should never have been a big deal in the first place. Women excelling at the highest levels in sport should be standard, not something that makes me sob into my Monday morning coffee. But that’s exactly why my editor was so moved; for two-year-old Hallie Ward and an entire generation of girls and boys, this is the norm. They'll never know a world in which girls don't play the same sports as men.

Having grown up in the '80s and '90s as a distinctly un-sporty kid, I'm now the mother of a 12-year-old girl who lives for football and is part of a national development squad for talented youth players. So I relish every image that rewrites the toxic messages I grew up accepting - that girls who want to play boys' sports are 'unladylike' (yes, really, those exact words) or trying to be something they’re not. We heard that message loud and clear. My daughter, on the other hand, finds the idea of girls not playing football as laughable as the fact that the only phone I had growing up was fixed to the kitchen wall.

As the first contracted Red Roses player to have a baby since the team went professional in 2019, Ward famously returned to elite rugby just 17 weeks after giving birth. She's spoken passionately about motherhood in sport, and says picturing Hallie helps her to persevere in the toughest of training sessions.

I'm not about to reduce Abbie Ward's accomplishments to the how-does-she-juggle-it-all trope that, incidentally, we never trot out for male athletes when they're pictured on the sports pitch with their kids. I’m not even here to say how grateful I am that no one asked her, after that World Cup win, how she manages to combine motherhood with a world-class sporting career - because that's not a question female athletes should ever have to fend off. But I am here to celebrate the fact that we're finally seeing it as unremarkable that a woman can help lead her country to victory on the rugby pitch at the same time as raising her child.

There was another image from the World Cup final that really spoke to me. This was a fleeting moment captured in the stands. A young girl was swept into her dad’s arms as the crowd, who broke the world record for attendance at a women's rugby match, leapt to their feet to celebrate the Red Roses making history. Father and daughter wore identical expressions of total joy. He only stopped pumping the air long enough to wipe away a tear.

If this sounds like sentimentality, it's not. I was at university in Twickenham in the late ’90s, so rugby fixtures dictated every aspect of our student life, from what time we headed out for the night to how rowdy public transport would be. But the idea of a professional England women’s team playing there, never mind a sell-out World Cup final, was something I never imagined could happen. Yet here we are; England's women's squad are the rugby world champions.

Best of all, Hallie Ward won't ever be told that rugby isn't ladylike, or even know a time when women aren't competing at the highest levels, filling stadiums, and breaking world records. That's not just a win for rugby or even for women in sport; it's a remarkable victory for every one of us.