Female Dutch rugby player says male athlete playing in women's league pulled her leg 'out of its socket'



A 20-year-old woman said a male athlete playing against women in rugby pulled her leg out of its socket with strength a woman would never possess.

Elena King plays in the top women's rugby league in the Netherlands, the Dutch premiership, and recently suffered a devastating injury involving two severed ligaments. King said the injury will likely cause lifelong knee pain, after a man with strength she had not seen from a woman in her sport caused the injury.

"I felt the strength being used against me: It's nothing that I can explain because I don’t have that strength myself," she said in an interview with the Times. "A cis woman could not have pulled my leg out of its socket ... I heard a really loud pop. That's when I started screaming. My leg was on fire."

King spoke out, confused as to why a male is allowed in a women's professional league, and said she did not want other women to face such painful injuries.

"I do not want it to ever happen to anyone again because I don't want it to happen to me. It could have been prevented," she claimed.

In 2020, World Rugby instituted a rule that banned men from playing women's rugby unless they "transitioned pre-puberty and have not experienced the biological effects of testosterone during puberty and adolescence."

The governing body has made several statements on the increased risk of injury with males playing in women's rugby and concluded through their own analysis that there is a 20-30% increase in head and neck strength in male players and 50-100% more upper body strength in men than women.

'We have women's spaces for a reason.'

Following the injury, the unnamed male player was suspended indefinitely and forced to participate in a training program.

"A playing ban was imposed to allow the situation to be further investigated in consultation with the parties involved," said Simone de Bruin, a board member for high performance at Rugby Nederland.

She continued, "Then a development plan focusing on game training was agreed for the player in question. After completing this mandatory training and lifting of the ban, the player will be monitored."

The governing official then stated that "inclusion, fairness, and player safety are extremely important principles" in rugby due to the higher risk of injury in the sport. The official did not appear to make mention of the increased risk of male athletes injuring women but said the organization will issue advice on transgender policy sometime this year.

The injured King said she believes women are intimidated and are afraid to speak out because they will be labeled as bigoted toward men who believe they are women.

"I think it’s got to do with — a friend of mine calls it — transphobia phobia. Not wanting to be seen as a transphobe, so then not saying anything because, you know, inclusion is important. That's also not what I'm on about. It's to do with safety," the athlete said.

She added, "Women want the best for everyone. We want everyone to feel included, so of course people are like, 'Why not?' But then you actually see the reasons why it's not possible. We have women's spaces for a reason."

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Man dominates women's college rugby tournament, then is removed from records despite being named tournament All-Star



A male athlete was named to an All-Tournament Team at a women's rugby event and then was erased from tournament records.

Gregory Wilt, who goes by "Camille," played in the 2025 Collegiate Rugby All-Stars Tournament in Atlanta for the Upstate NY All Stars. Wilt was named to the regional team due to his presumed outstanding play with Syracuse University.

Upstate NY didn't play very well, however, going 1-3 in pool play before defeating the Great Waters All-Stars in a consolation match to finish seventh in the 10-team tournament.

Wilt didn't score in the first game but went on to score twice in each of the last four games. That was plenty to get him named to the All-Tournament Team. The graphic that included the name of the All-Tournament Team members appeared to have been wiped from the rugby organization's social media pages; however, the image still exists on its homepage and here.

That wasn't the only place that National Collegiate Rugby saw fit to remove Wilt from. Not only was the athlete removed from a list of searchable players that participated in the tournament, he was also removed from the Upstate NY roster.

Despite playing as No. 13 for Upstate NY, as reflected in video and scoresheets, Wilt is nowhere to be found on the team's list of players.

The searchable database of tournament participants indeed lists Wilt's teammates but not Wilt.

Despite the deletion of records, the Independent Council on Women’s Sports spotted the previous posts and remarked on X that the Upstate NY team "denied a female athlete the opportunity to make the All-Star selection squad."

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'Women ... were forced to compete at an unfair disadvantage.'

In the 19-12 loss against Rugby Northeast, No. 13 Wilt still scored twice; one of those scores was caught on camera. The video showed Wilt clumsily running laterally across the field but was still fast enough to easily outrun all the women chasing him.

Despite showcasing a real lack of athleticism for his size, Wilt still possessed an obvious speed advantage over his opponents.

"Women from universities across the country were forced to compete at an unfair disadvantage and face increased safety risks during the tournament in Atlanta, GA," ICONs wrote on Instagram.

Despite no real roster list existing on the University of Syracuse women's rugby team site, where Wilt plays, there is a page on the collegiate rugby website for Wilt under Syracuse. There is no data on the page, however, besides a name.

On the Syracuse women's website, Wilt is seen on the homepage in the upper left corner of a team photo.

While scoresheets for Syracuse's 2024-2025 season do not appear on the website either, the team certainly dominated competition throughout the year, likely due to Wilt's play given he was named to the regional All-Star Team.

According to Syracuse's schedule, the not-so women's team scored a whopping 341 points in six games, giving up just 36. That's an average score of 57-6.

However, they were more dominant than that. The team only gave up more than seven points once, skewing their average, but that was still a 55-17 win at Buffalo. Syracuse also beat Binghamton University 55-0 and Cornell an amazing 99-7.

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