Tipp duo O’Leary and Wall part of new age of Ireland Rugby

By Thomas Conway

When it comes to women’s sport in Ireland, the dial has most definitely shifted. The past few months have demonstrated that.

This year’s All-Ireland ladies football and camogie championship were greeted with an almost unprecedented level of feverish excitement. The recent success of the Republic of Ireland’s women’s soccer team in qualifying for next summer’s FIFA World Cup was one of the most glorious moments in the sport’s recent history. It was quickly followed by another Katie Taylor triumph, along with a string of successes at the European Amateur Boxing Championships in Montenegro - which included seven medals, three of them gold.

Rugby has enjoyed slightly less of the limelight, but last week, it too marked another significant development, announcing the release of 29 full-time professional contracts, valued at between €15,000 and €30,000.

Tipperary players Maeve Óg O’Leary and Dorothy Wall were among the recipients and will now have the opportunity to train full-time under the stewardship of high-performance director Greg McWilliams.

The initiative began last week, and both O’Leary and Wall were unambiguous in their support for the programme, citing the multitude of benefits it will create for the women’s national team, and for players more generally across the country.

22-year-old O’Leary, who has enjoyed a rapid rise up the ranks over the past couple of seasons, expressed delight at effectively being able to call rugby her day job.

Speaking to IRFU television, the Ballina woman acknowledged that the programme will offer a different experience of working life than the one she might have envisaged in her teenage years. But she was delighted to take up the contract and thrilled to become a part of the set-up.

“I’m delighted to be a part of it,” O’Leary said.

“It’s so exciting to be able to call rugby our day job now, and so being able to be in here today, on a working day, is great. It’s a different kind of a job but it’s been great so far.”

The former DCU student first began to make waves playing at college level as well as with Dublin club Blackrock College. She was subsequently selected for the Munster interprovincial squad, with her performances in red ultimately securing her a place on the Ireland roster. Injury ruled her out of Ireland’s recent tour of Japan, but the Ballina native is almost fully recuperated and enthusiastic to get going once again.

“I’m raring to go now,” she added.

“I’m hoping to get back on the pitch this weekend or the weekend after, so the timing of all of this is kind of right for me. I’m going to be able to start training with the rest of squad, so that’s brilliant.”

O’Leary is the second individual from her household to embark on a fully-fledged professional rugby career. Her older brother Shane has enjoyed a successful journeyman career, plying his trade at various clubs across Ireland, Britain and France, and representing Canada at the 2018 Rugby World Cup, a nation which he is eligible to play for through his mother, Delia. Currently on the books at Rouen in Northern France, he is in the midst of launching his own personal training business, but his sister is at an entirely different stage of her career. It will, somewhat inevitably, bring its own pressures and challenges, but Maeve Óg is clearly revelling in the experience. She is now a role-model, and she’s embracing that status.

“It’s unbelievable,” she added.

“I was just chatting to one of the guys there and really it’s about those young girls out there, who get up on a Sunday morning to go training, who say each day that I want to grow up and be a rugby player. For me, it’s exciting to be one of their role models. Because now, when they grow up, they can say that I want to be a professional rugby player.”

Similar career trajectory

Fethard native Dorothy Wall shares a similar career trajectory to O’Leary, first capturing attention at club level before progressing on to play with Blackrock College in Dublin, and subsequently earning provincial and national call-ups.

Also, a talented sevens player, the flanker was among the Ireland squad that travelled to Japan in August, and she feels that this new high-performance initiative represents another positive step forward for elite-level women’s rugby in Ireland.

“Japan was a huge trip for us,” she said.

“There were so many younger players there and I think we set the tone in terms of the culture and how we wanted to play. So hopefully this training programme can be another building block, like the one we set in Japan.”

The symbolism and psychological impact of this programme is hugely important. As O’Leary noted, younger players now have an ideal to aspire to, a sense of direction which can guide their development up through the ranks. For players at the top however, having access to a programme such as this one will almost certainly enhance performance and elevate playing standards. This is something Wall emphasised when speaking last week. Players now have an opportunity to invest more hours and energy into the rugby side of their lives. They can spend their days surrounded by experts, advising them on all aspects of performance.

“I suppose you’re constantly trying to learn more and be better, and that’s across the board - S&C, physio, nutrition, and then also just learning the game. So, it makes sense that the more hours you have, the better you can become in those areas,” Maeve said.

Up until very recently, the world was such that only boys could dream of becoming a professional rugby player, while young girls were left wondering how far they would have to travel to access their nearest team. The English national team became the first in the world to go fully professional in 2018, and since then various other nations have followed suit. Earlier this year, Wales, Scotland, and Italy all announced similar programmes. In this case, Ireland was not ahead of the curve, but it has now caught up, and the national sporting landscape has become that bit more even.