Women’s Rugby World Cup – Pool A
England v Australia
📍 Brighton & Hove Albion Stadium
📅 Saturday, 6 September | 🕔 17:00 BST
📺 Live on My Newspaper Two, My Newspaper Radio Sports Extra, My Newspaper iPlayer and My Newspaper Sport website/app
As the anthem rang out at Franklin’s Gardens, England flanker Abi Burton fought back tears.
“When we were singing God Save the King, my eyes started to fill up and I was like ‘stop it, stop it’,” she told My Newspaper Sport.
It was pride – pride in her World Cup debut, and pride in simply being there at all. Because just three years ago, Burton was lying in a coma, fighting for her life.
A terrifying diagnosis
After returning from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Burton’s health declined rapidly. At 22, she was exhausted, withdrawn, and initially misdiagnosed with depression linked to a knee injury.
Her condition worsened. She suffered seizures, violent outbursts, and terrifying lapses of control that left her family hiding knives for their own safety.
Admitted to a psychiatric ward, tests for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder came back negative. Finally, a specialist spotted the real culprit: autoimmune encephalitis, a rare condition where the immune system attacks the brain.
Burton was so agitated that doctors couldn’t treat her safely. Her family made a devastating decision – to place her in a medically induced coma. What was meant to be three days stretched to almost four weeks. Doctors warned she might never wake, or if she did, it could be with severe brain damage.
When she finally opened her eyes, Burton had to relearn how to walk, talk, read, and write, having lost more than three stone in weight.
The long road back
“Waking up, you think you’re fine,” Burton recalls. “But when they tried to get me up the stairs, I collapsed. That’s when I realised recovery was going to be much longer than I imagined.”
While her former England Sevens teammates competed at the Commonwealth Games, Burton’s future in rugby seemed impossible.
But she fought back. After a year of rehab, she signed for Trailfinders Women in 2023, then earned a place in the Great Britain Sevens squad the following summer. By 2024, she was back in an England shirt, scoring two tries on her Six Nations debut against Wales.
World Cup pride
Burton didn’t cross the line in England’s emphatic 92–3 win over Samoa last weekend, but her mere presence was victory enough.
“I saw my grandparents, my mum and dad, my brother in the crowd during the anthems,” she said. “They went through hell and back over the past couple of years. To come out the other side together makes moments like this so special.”
Among the crowd was a Team GB doctor who had visited Burton in hospital three years earlier. She showed Burton a photo from those dark days – a sobering reminder of how far she has come.
“I try not to dwell on the journey too much,” Burton said, “but moments like that hit you – like, wow, it really did happen.”
Burton has already won battles far tougher than any she will face at this World Cup. Whatever unfolds over the next four weeks, her comeback is already one of rugby’s most extraordinary stories.
