Ireland's women's rugby squad is in action at the World Cup in Canada this week, some on unpaid leave from their jobs. Mary Hannigan meets two of them
It has, admits Tania Rosser, been a strange old journey. As a child in her native New Zealand, she had to climb out the window of her home to sneak off to play rugby because her mother, concerned for her safety, would have preferred if she played netball.
Fast forward to the women's rugby World Cup in Canada this month and among the supporters at the tournament is none other than Rosser's mother, like her husband making her first trip outside New Zealand to watch her daughter in action. For Ireland.
"She definitely wasn't too keen when I was younger. My Dad supported me, but, yeah, she would have been happier if I'd stuck to netball. She reckoned it was a little safer. I'd tell my Dad where I was going, but we kept it to ourselves. She would have worried too much. But she's fine about it now, and all my family think it's fantastic that I'm playing for Ireland."
Rosser grew up in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, where rugby was in the blood, not just of her own family but, it seemed, the entire community. "Everyone is out all the time playing rugby, on the beaches, in the parks, and even then there was a lot of under-age rugby for girls. You could start at the age of five and carry right on. There are hundreds of women's teams back home, and every secondary school would have a girls' team. When I arrived in Ireland, five years ago, it was completely different. There just weren't many places where girls could play. I struggled to find a team."
When she finally found a team, her first coach was George Hook. "He was a bit from the old school: 'girls shouldn't be playing rugby', but he was brilliant, a great laugh. It has improved hugely since then, but there is still some way to go, especially with the older generation. Their reaction is always funny when they hear you play rugby, 'that's a terrible sport for women to be playing.' "
Sarahjane Belton, Rosser's captain on the Irish team, had a markedly different rugby journey, taking up the game in her second year at the University of Limerick. She cringes as she recalls her earliest days in an Irish shirt, not least the day Ireland lost 79-0 to England. "It was a nightmare, to be honest," she says. "All I can remember is thinking, I don't know what to do! But things have improved since then, at every level. We've definitely been encouraged by how the game has developed over the past couple of years. From the grassroots up there are growing numbers playing the game and we're beginning to get more coverage," she says. Much of the credit for this is down to Alison Donnelly, press officer with the Irish Women's Rugby Football Union (IWRFU). "And we're beating teams we weren't beating before, so there's progress there, too.
"In terms of respect, I think that's improving too, but that's a battle for so many women's sports - trying to get the respect that your male counterparts get without question. It's always difficult, but it is improving with growing awareness of the sport and the abilities of the people playing it."
Women's rugby in Ireland dates back to the 1970s when it was played in University College, Dublin and Trinity College, but the IWRFU wasn't formed until 1992, when it organised an all-Ireland league and began promoting the sport at club, provincial and international levels. There are approximately 800 girls and women playing the game competitively in Ireland, with 35 clubs established. Ireland played its first international in Scotland in 1993, and 13 years later have gone into the current World Cup seeded 10th out of the 12 competing nations.
Like Rosser, Belton needed to do some reassuring when she took up the game, trying to convince loved ones that rugby wasn't as dangerous as they assumed it to be. They may have doubted her reassurances two years ago when a stray elbow, in a Six Nations Championship game, left her with a septum that needed re-setting.
"But these things don't happen too often," she says. "People are very concerned about their safety and the safety of others on the pitch. It's not something you take lightly. The last thing you want is for anyone to be injured, particularly girls. You don't want scars on your face, or to be disfigured. Guys might get away with that, but it's not something women want. But look at camogie, people waving sticks around? I'd be a lot more afraid in that situation. I feel a lot safer on a rugby field," she says.
The Irish squad has a truly national look to it, with 13 counties represented (Cork, with six players, tops the list), as well as the UK, New Zealand and Canada, from where Rosser's Blackrock team-mate Shannon Houston hails. Nine of the players are students, another nine are teachers, but the rest come from a wide range of professions, among them an aircraft mechanic, environmental officer, firefighter, medical scientist, personal assistant, physiotherapist, postwoman and a social worker.
Belton belonged in the student category until she completed her PhD on physical education, in the build-up to the World Cup. "I've been up the walls, working crazy hours," she says. "But I'm lucky. My hours were flexible. There are a lot of people in the squad who took three weeks' unpaid leave to go to the World Cup; people with mortgages and so on, so it's very, very tough. It is frustrating, but the girls don't complain about it. They want to play in the World Cup.
"Trying to combine everything can get a bit stressful, such as trying to juggle things so that you can fit in your training," says Rosser, who is a teacher at the Archbishop McQuaid primary school in Loughlinstown, Co Dublin. "I try to get to the gym in the morning and again in the afternoon, ball skills in the afternoon and then club training in the evening. In the build-up to the World Cup we trained three times a day, so it was tough going, but as a teacher I'm one of the luckier ones in the squad."
Is it work, rugby, rugby, work, with not much in between? "Yeah, it has been that way for the past while, but you just have to prioritise things - sometimes rugby, sometimes work - generally social lives don't get priority," says Belton, who will take up a lecturing job at St Pat's teacher training college in Drumcondra when she returns from Canada.
"When you play rugby at international level you have to be as fit as you can be, and part of that is getting our diet right. The girls would eat quite healthily, but it can be difficult when you're working nine-to-five, like anyone with a busy life, to get the meals you require at the required time. But we manage, we just have to be organised. And no, we don't eat raw meat. Honest."
• The Women's Rugby World Cup runs until September 17th