TThe contract is signed, sealed and delivered. Ilona Maher will play Premiership Women’s Rugby and wear the Bristol Bears colors after the club did everything it could to ensure the Olympic medalist could play in England. The USA international is a groundbreaking addition to the PWR, but she also says being the biggest name in rugby can add to the pressure on the pitch.

Maher went viral at the Tokyo Olympics and this year at the Paris Games, where she was part of the first U.S. team to win a sevens medal when it beat Australia in the bronze medal final. An appearance on Dancing with the Stars, where she placed second with her partner Alan Bersten, garnered even more social media followers, totaling 4.6 million on Instagram and 3.3 million on TikTok. The 28-year-old spoke to a sports psychiatrist during the Olympics and said she may continue to do so when she moves to Bristol in the new year.

“When I went to the Olympics I thought, ‘Maybe I can try to do what I did in Tokyo and get that big,'” she tells the Guardian. “I knew I could do it, but it was so cool the extent to which I did it.

“It was scary back then. Now I have three million people watching me. Millions of people watch me play rugby. What if I kick the ball? What if I miss a tackle and look like an idiot? It was important to me not to get carried away by it. This meant I was with our sports psychologist every night doing mindfulness exercises and staying really present because I was nervous.

“I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t serious because I do social media or because social media takes away my influence on the field. As an athlete, I would like to just focus on what I do on the field, but if I want to live a comfortable life and make real money, I actually have to do more. Maybe this is a female thing, sometimes we need to do more. I wasn’t willing to give up something that could be so lucrative for me, I wanted to make sure I could do both.

“I think I should still see a sports psychologist because I think it’s going to be that I come to this and people expect things from me. She says, ‘Oh, it’s Ilona Maher, she’s coming to play rugby and it’s 15 seconds.'”

Maher has met her Bristol teammates but will return to the US before Christmas. They will then return to the south west of England in the new year and play their first game, possibly against local rivals Gloucester-Hartpury, on January 4th. But this signing almost didn’t happen.

She contacted several clubs at the end of 2023 because she wanted to play in the top English league. Maher planned to join a club after the 2024 Olympics. However, as she had not played 15s rugby since 2021, she was ineligible to play.

However, during her time on Dancing with the Stars, Bristol contacted her and said they would work to get Maher a visa so she could perform for them. This included an appeal process supported by the Rugby Football Union, with which the club was successful.

As reports emerged that Maher might be joining an English club, other teams began making contact with the star.

“Suddenly I started getting all these calls and emails from people saying, ‘We heard you might be eligible. Would you like to come for us?’ Okay, I wanted to play for you, I wanted to do this. I had a lot of other teams calling to play. I think I stood by Bristol because they were doing this work and I wanted to stay with them.”

Maher spoke with Bristol head coach Dave Ward about what position she will play on the team. Before signing, she had expressed her desire to try out a position at striker. “I think we’ll see a wing, something in the middle,” she says. “Then I would like to, we have just talked about it, if we can try it in the forwards and see if there is an opportunity to go to eight or flanker at some point. I’ve never been picked up before because I’m always the tallest girl in sevens, so I think this is a great time to learn these other skills that you wouldn’t get the opportunity to do (in sevens).”

One of the main reasons Maher wanted to ply her trade in the 15s game again is the 2025 Rugby World Cup taking place in England. The USA qualified for the tournament and was drawn against England, Australia and Samoa in the group stage.

Maher, who took part in the 2021 World Cup in New Zealand, said: “I want to put myself in the best position to hopefully be selected for the World Cup. I think there are many reasons. I really love what PWR does and I think I love their branding, I think that’s really cool. I’ve been in the USA sevens tournament for six years now. So I wanted to try something different, live somewhere else and meet new people.

“I feel like it’s the first day of school, I’m nervous, I don’t know everyone. It’s a stressful thing and it’s out of my comfort zone, but I think it’s exactly what I love and I like to challenge myself in that way.”

Her contract with Bristol runs until the end of the season, which culminates in the final on March 16, but this spell at the club may not be her last for 15 years before she returns to the sevens game. She said of her future plans: “I think it’s about seeing how things go now. Who knows how that works? What other options arise?

“I would love to return to sevens because it would be great to play at home in the 2028 Olympics. That’s the plan, but I’ve also been doing the sevens for six years, and I’ve been doing it literally since I got out of college. So I want to see what else is out there and build a little bit now.”

Premiership Women’s Rugby will definitely want Maher to stay in the league beyond this season. Their signing is a game-changer and one of the smartest signings in the history of the game.