Ives Campion ‘excited’ for Lightning return after England exploits

Newly capped Red Rose Lilli Ives Campion shared her excitement in returning to the Loughborough Lightning camp after nearly three months spent away representing her country.

The second row, who recently turned 21 years of age, was called up into the senior England camp for their preparations ahead of WXV and made her debut in the friendly victory over France at Kingsholm.

John Mitchell retained her services in the squad that flew out to Canada, and while she did not feature in the tournament on the pitch, she played her part in the Red Roses retaining their WXV 1 title.

In her absence, Lightning have played twice in the PWR Up Series and the opening two rounds of the Premiership Women’s Rugby season – and Ives Campion is among the group of returning players who have bolstered the squad heading into Saturday’s clash with Sale Sharks at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens – tickets are available from £7.50 adult and £3 juniors by clicking HERE.

“The team we’ve had has worked really hard and there’s not too much experience in the team at the moment, and I think they have done really well,” said Ives Campion. “I think we can only build on those performances. 

“I give them complete credit for what they’ve done so far, as a team they’ve worked really well together, they’ve attacked these games, scored lots of tries, which is brilliant. It is now about how we can capitalise on what they’ve done to keep improving over the season.”

Standing in their way this weekend is a Sale team that Lightning defeated in their friendly fixture of the 2024/25 season, and also triumphed in all four games when the sides met in the 2023/24 campaign.

“I am really excited, we've obviously got lots of girls coming back in,” she added. “The girls have done a really good job leading up to this and it is now about how can we get together as a group to really put out the best performance on Saturday.

“Sale are always a really brilliant side and they always bring a really physical and tough match so I am actually really excited to get into it.”

To read more about Lilli’s involvement with England during the summer and autumn, check out the free digital matchday programme for the Sale Sharks match which will be published on Friday evening ahead of Saturday’s encounter (kick-off: 2pm).