Chloe Reynolds
Ilona Maher will join the Women’s premiership team Bristol Bears in January 2025.
After her recent success at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, where she won a bronze medal, she has become the current most-followed rugby star on social media amid her new signing.
Rugby career
Maher can operate as a wing or a centre and made her international debut in 2018.
Maher and her two sisters grew up playing sports, and she started playing rugby at the age of 17. Her first team was the Quinnipiac Bobcats, a university rugby team which was where she began playing rugby sevens.
Maher’s first Olympic games was in Tokyo 2020, which was also only the second appearance of rugby 7s in the summer tournament. Throughout the tournament, Maher scored three tries, and ultimately, team USA finished sixth. She was also a huge part of the 2024 Olympics and scored tries in all three group games.
Maher’s signing for Bristol Bears comes ahead of the 2025 women’s Rugby World Cup, which is being held in England, a tournament that Maher is supposed to be a part of.
Outside of rugby, Maher has also just finished a successful stint on Dancing with Stars, where she and professional Partner Alan Bursten finished in second. Not only was Maher the first rugby player to compete in the ballroom show, but she was also the first female contestant to lift her male partner.
The reaction on social media
The announcement of her signing made the internet go wild.
Bristol Bears’ social media followings doubled overnight. Her debut fixture, set for early January, has had to be moved from the Bears’ home at Shaftesbury Park to Ashton Gate in order to fit the crowd. This came after the fixture sold out and fans demanded more tickets.
Maher uses her social media to advocate for body positivity, being comfortable with having muscles but still being feminine, and promoting awareness for women’s sports.
Maher has 4.6 million followers on Instagram and 3.3 million on TikTok, and since signing for the UK-based team, her followers continue to grow.
The response from the press
Speaking to the Guardian, Maher said: “All of a sudden, I was getting all of these calls and emails from people saying: ‘We’re hearing you might be eligible to play, you want to come for us?’ OK, well, I did want to play for you. I had a lot of other teams calling to come play and I think I stood by Bristol because they did this work, and I wanted to stick with them.”
Maher also took into account her hopes of advancing to the World Cup and wanting to try something new.
“I have been in the USA Sevens for six years now. So I wanted to try something different, go and live somewhere else, and meet new people”
Head coach of the Bristol Bears, Dave Ward, said: “This is a huge coup to be able to bring Ilona Maher to Bristol Bears on a short-term deal.
She is one of the biggest names in women’s sport, let alone rugby, and we believe she will add real value to our programme on and off the field. Ilona is one of the standout stars in the sevens game, and we can’t wait to see her play for the Bears in XVs.
Her ability to ball in hand will give our attack a new dimension, and her desire to star in the Rugby World Cup in England next summer is a huge driving force for her to achieve great things at Bears.
Her profile as an athlete to inspire the next generation aligns exactly with ours as a club, and we can only applaud he work she has and will do for the women’s game.”
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Featured image courtesy of Hirobi on Pixabay. No changes have been made to this image. Image license found here.
