When 400m hurdler Sally Gunnell crossed the finishing line to win gold at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, it left a big impression on young rugby player Rachael Burford.

Other than Gunnell, the then six-year-old Medway RFC mini didn’t have any female role models to aspire to.

But, 22 years on, Burford and her England Women’s Rugby World Cup 2014 winning teammates have changed all that, inspiring more girls to take up the sport since their victory over Canada in August.

“A few weeks ago we went to the Houses of Parliament and the 1994 Women’s World Cup winning team were there. We didn’t know each other, which isn’t a good thing; they should have been our role models,” the England centre said.

“Hopefully young girls will now say, if Rachael Burford can do it so can I. There are now 26 girls who have a World Cup medal that they can look up to, whereas when I was younger it was a runner, Sally Gunnell, who I took inspiration from.

“The sport has come on massively with all the coverage the World Cup received and I think that will happen again with sevens being included in the Olympics.

“Whether you’re a rugby fan or not, everybody talks about the Olympics and people will tune in and get excited. It is going to be huge for our sport.

“The fact that we are the first team sport gives us a real chance to showcase our talent and our sport. A big smile comes across my face whenever I think about the potential of winning the first team gold [in 2016].

“World Cups have always been the pinnacle, and I’ve been lucky enough to compete in both the Fifteens and Sevens format and to win a World Cup medal.

“But now there is a different goal to aspire to: winning gold at the Olympics.”

The journey to Rio starts when the Women’s Sevens Series 2014-15 gets underway in Dubai on 4-5 December, with the top four teams at the end of the Series qualifying for the 2016 Games.

If successful, England will head to South America as members of Team GB. 

“When you’ve tasted success you want more of it,” said Burford, who has been named England’s vice captain for Dubai. 

“It would be a shame for us to stop at one gold medal and say that’s enough. We’re not like that, we want to continually improve and go one better.” 

With the buzz created by a record-breaking Women’s Rugby World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games coming up fast on the horizon, women’s rugby is entering an exciting new chapter and that applies to England’s players more than most.

Since the WRWC 2014 win 19 of the country’s best female sevens players, Burford included, have been awarded professional contracts putting them on a par with their rivals who all had programmes of some form last season.

“We weren’t even on a part-time programme last year, we just came together before tournaments,” Burford said. “Even so, we were within touching distance with the top three – New Zealand, Australia and Canada – at some stage in every tournament. We just couldn’t finish things off and follow up one good result with another.

“Now we’ve got an opportunity to take it to the next level. For us, it is a good opportunity to see where we are at having been full-time since the end of August. It is quite difficult to see for yourself how far you’ve progressed as a squad when you are in camp.”

Twelve months on from their Plate win, England have been drawn in Pool C with Fiji, Brazil and Canada in Dubai, a place that Burford knows well having got her first taste of sevens there back in 2005.

Given the rivalry established between the nations from their two epic World Cup meetings in France, and the large contingent of Fifteens players in the respective squads, all eyes will be on England’s final pool clash against Canada.

But Burford, a representative of women’s and sevens rugby on the newly-formed World Rugby Athletes’ Commission, knows nothing can be taken for granted in Sevens.

“Fiji surprised us with the way they played when beating us in China last year, and won’t be coming to Dubai to just take part,” she reasoned.

“The unpredictability of sevens is huge, and that competitiveness is great for the long-term future of the sport. Everybody who has experienced a sevens tournament knows how exciting it is: the fast pace of it and the fact anything can happen.

“For us, we just want to go to Dubai and do ourselves justice.”