Inverness Craig Dunain stalwart is ready for a new chapter after 11 years with rugby club
An Inverness rugby club stalwart is starting a new chapter at the end of the season, after more than a decade making a mark on and off the pitch.
It was 2014 when Jess Butler started playing rugby for the first time, joining Inverness Craig Dunain women’s team – she was 45 at the time.
Since then, her love for the game and the club led her to start a pathway into coaching and refereeing, and to become the first woman to lead the club as president.
Butler, who stepped down from her top role last season, is now set to take a new direction away from coaching and playing.
“I'm not quitting altogether, but I'm just changing my focus,” she explained.
“I do enjoy coaching, but I just feel match officiating is the focus for me at the moment.
“There are only two mainland female referees in the Highland Rugby Referees Society – although there are some island ones now. Looking back, I realized that in all the years we have been playing, we only had three female referees, which is a pretty horrifying thought!
“That's one of the reasons I thought ‘no, we need more, we need to try to be visible to show that it's possible’. You see it more in the central belt, there are a lot more female referees in that area, but not up here.”
Her main goal looking forward, she said, is to encourage more women to take up the whistle.
“Getting more experience as a referee has definitely improved my confidence,” she continued.
“I can see women referees tend to be much more self-critical. I'm very self-critical myself.
“I still get a bit of impostor syndrome because, as a female in the game, there are still dinosaurs who think you should not be there and you should not be refereeing.
“You’ve just got to try and hold it in your head that if there’s no ref, there’s no game, but it has moved on massively since I started.
“I think I will go back to coaching, but this time I will be coaching little ones. It's very different, and it'll be refreshing.”
Butler is one of few female coaches to have obtained an advanced coaching qualification.
She said she hopes to see new coaching leadership stepping up within the club.
“I'm not getting any younger, and I think it’s good for the club to have a change in leadership – if you’ve got the same person the whole time, it can be a bit stale,” she reasoned.
“It’s important to have variety, to keep it fresh for everyone. It will be really good to give some of our younger coaches an opportunity.
“When I was starting coaching, there was a head coach and I was the assistant coach – whatever you do, it’s always hard to put your own stamp on things.”
When Butler became the first woman to become president for the club, she was pivotal in steering it through the Covid-19 pandemic.
That was a major challenge for every club out there, but even amongst that she praised Inverness Craig Dunain’s attitude towards equality, with it being one of first clubs in the region to have a committee split 50/50 between men and women.
She said it’s important to go against the grain, explaining: “Even when I first stood as president, there was someone who said that the club wasn’t ready for a female president. Not too long after they came back to me and said ‘actually, we are’.”
In a video posted on the club’s social channels for International Women’s Day, players and committee members celebrated Butler, in her role as mentor, friend, role model and saying that the club “would be entirely lost without her”.
Butler herself takes a different approach though, commenting: “I don't feel like I'm inspirational. I am just someone who just gets on with it, but that video is the kind of thing that reminds you who and why you are doing it for.
“Whenever I'm feeling a bit low, I shall just play that to myself!”
Sailing has been far from smooth for Butler and the club, as Craig Dunain found itself fighting for facilities after being homeless for more than 20 years.
Hopes to find a new home in the planned new pitch and facilities planned to be built at UHI Inverness have been shattered after the project – which received planning permission in 2023 – stalled due to an increase in costs.
The continuous battle to secure adequate facilities for the club, and a vital space for its survival, has been taking a toll on Butler and the committee, becoming one of the reasons behind her decision to step down with the president’s role taken up by Richard Keel.
“What was really consuming was not the running of the club itself, it was dealing with the local authority,” she said.
“The lack of responses to phone calls and emails, and the broken promises, that absolutely wore me down.
“Forever trying to arrange meetings, seeing investment in other clubs around the country and Inverness Craig Dunain left with nothing – it did really hurt, because the region needs that choice.
“We're a little grassroots club, and it’s not just about winning games, it’s so much more than that. It's about developing people’s skills, inclusivity and the joy of rugby. It's about more than just the game.”
For her, it was a hard choice to step away from her committee role, likening her departure to grieving.
“It was like a loss – my whole life had been about the club really,” she admitted.
“Every spare minute was spent doing stuff for the club, so when I lost that it was hard to peel back layers, and it was really hard still being involved as a coach and player.
“However, it was the right time, and I felt ready. I hadn't felt ready – physically and mentally – before. It was a relief to just tell everyone.
“I'd written my leaving speech so many times and scribbled it up and wrote it up. How do you put into words how a club feels, something that has just given you so much?”
Although time has come for her to walk towards a new direction, Butler said she will be still very much involved with the club, adding: “I have not given up completely! If they need a super-sub I’ll still be playing occasionally, if it doesn’t clash with match officiating duties.
“I am very fond of the club, and how it survives despite everything that's been thrown at it.
“The support of all the players – I think that's what keeps us all together and keeps us going. However rubbish I sometimes felt before going training, I always felt a hundred times better after.
“It’s been amazing for that, and for all the people I met along the way.
“I'm like a piece of rock. You'll cut me in half and they'll see written ICD in it! Once a Craig Dunain player, always a Craig Dunain player.”