Griffin took up the sport of rugby at university in the 1970s, and also played rugby with the Richmond Women's Rugby Club. Griffin was a co-founder of England's Rugby Football Union for Women in 1983, an organisation for which she later served as the chair. She also was one of the principal organisers of the 1991 Women's Rugby World Cup, the first ever Women's Rugby World Cup, which was run despite having no support or financial backing from the International Rugby Board. Griffin later became the first female elected board member of the England Rugby Football Union in 2014.