Born into a large, sporty family in Pittsburgh, USA, Mary Forsyth enjoyed an active childhood and became a high school athletics prospect.

However, becoming a varsity athlete was not an option for Forsyth when she enrolled at Penn State University in 1977 as she needed to get a job to pay for her studies.

Fortunately, she discovered that a women’s rugby team had just been set up and so she swapped her running spikes for a pair of boots.

Forsyth represented Penn State for the next four years and continued to play rugby when she returned home to Pittsburgh. In 1985, she transferred to London for work and found herself living yards from England’s first women’s rugby club in Finchley, where she would meet Deborah Griffin and Sue Dorrington.

The following year, Forsyth and her team-mates moved south from Finchley to Richmond, and she would later use her accounting qualifications to help get her new club’s finances in shape. She would also win a solitary cap for England – against Sweden in 1988.

It was perhaps unsurprising that Griffin would tap into those skills as she asked Forsyth to serve as the inaugural women’s Rugby World Cup’s financial controller.

Many of the organising committee meetings on the road to South Wales were held in a boardroom at the central London office where Forsyth worked at the time.

Seven days before the tournament was due to kick off, Forsyth gave birth to her first child, Kathryn. Although, she would understandably not make it to Cardiff until the weekend of the final, she retained an organisational role, relaying messages from her home in Ealing to Griffin and Alice D. Cooper out in the field. Forsyth continued to support her club at Richmond as Club Treasurer and Chair of the Women’s Section.