Val Moore

Valerie Janet Moore (born June 1962), known as Val Moore, is an English former rugby union player and team manager, later working in public health and coaching. A full back in her playing career, she represented Great Britain and was involved with the England women's national team during the 1980s. She later attended John Cleveland College, Hinckley, and in 1977 played hockey for the school in the Leicestershire and Rutland under-15 championship.

By 1978 she was playing club hockey for Hinckley Ladies' Hockey Club and had progressed through junior county trials, being named as a reserve when the county teams were selected. In 1980 she was still competing in county junior hockey, scoring in representative competition. Her hockey career continued at university level. While at Loughborough University, she was selected as one of five players for a British women's team at a European Universities hockey tournament, and was later described as a former English Universities hockey player.

At club level she became a player for Wasps Ladies, then one of the strongest sides in women's rugby. At that time, Moore's regular routine involved travelling to London either to train with the men at Saracens or with the women at Wasps, underlining how the sport still depended on players crossing between club structures and borrowing whatever facilities were available. She continued to regularly play for Wasps and was in the team that won the Women's RUFC Tournament Trophy in its first year.

Moore's final cap for Great Britain came in the European Cup in 1988, when Great Britain were runners-up. Although a Great Britain player, and England squad member, Moore never represented England, despite having "picked up the odd splinter on the England bench from 1986–88". Injury curtailed her international playing career. By 1989 she was describing a nagging back injury as the factor that had prevented further international appearances, By April 1988 Ely were being described as winning "even without their coach and mentor Val Moore".

England team management Moore later moved from player to administrator and became an important figure in the early management of the England women's national side. Moore was the England team manager in 1990 for their match against Wales. By March and April 1991 she was firmly established as England women's team manager. A Sunday Mirror feature ahead of the first Women's Rugby World Cup in 1991 described her as manager of the 30-strong England squad, while a Wales on Sunday report during the tournament quoted "England team manager Val Moore" discussing opposition, continuity and selection. England finished runners-up in that tournament.

She remained in post through the early 1990s and was manager for the 1994 Women's Rugby World Cup. Her role extended far beyond conventional management. She was involved in securing sponsorship, arranging tracksuits and shirts, sourcing transport support, organising accommodation and dealing with the chronic underfunding of the women's game. This was during a time when players had to appeal to their clubs for financial help, that the 36-strong party had to cover tracksuits, T-shirts and sweatshirts costing £85 per person, and that some players who could not afford even discounted hotel bills stayed with friends in Edinburgh.

Teaching career Moore's rugby years ran alongside a teaching career. In 1986 she was a biology teacher at St John Fisher School in Peterborough at the time of her international debut.

Public health career After leaving full-time teaching, Moore moved into public health. She worked with Cambridgeshire Health Authority from 1989, initially in health promotion and later in senior advisory and leadership roles. She subsequently worked as Regional Associate Director at the Health Development Agency and then joined the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), where she held senior implementation roles between 2005 and 2015. The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust board papers published in 2024 described her as a former NICE implementation director, former Chair of Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and a Non-Executive Director of the trust.

Swimming and later activities Moore later developed a new sporting identity in open-water swimming. In her own account, this began with a swimming holiday in Croatia in 2008 with her partner, despite her not then being an effective front-crawl swimmer. Over the following years she became a committed open-water swimmer, later working as a coach and lifeguard and founding Toe in Swim. Her swimming work focused on confidence-building, safe acclimatisation to cold water and widening access to open-water swimming, including women-focused initiatives and support for less confident or less represented swimmers.