For Nichola Fryday, winning the Rugby Writers of Ireland Women’s Player of the Year is especially nice after she announced her retirement from playing for her country in July.
She does not regret the decision though, and after eight good years with Ireland she felt she had given everything she could give it.
“When you retire you do think about that next tournament and you are worried will I feel regret or will I feel I gave it up too early, that I could have done more. But when the girls went off I was excited for them and really wanted them to do well, but I knew that I had my the right choice for me and I’m content with that,” she said.
“I have career goals that I want to push on with now. Everything outside of rugby as well, all those years of not making weddings or birthdays or your family side of things. There comes a time when you want to put your focus back on those things and it may be a bit selfish because I am still quite early in my playing career. But I feel for me like I have given everything that I could do to Ireland.”
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The 28-year-old featured as a strong leader throughout a challenging final season. Named Ireland captain in 2022, the Tullamore native has enjoyed success with Exeter Chiefs with whom she reached the Premier XVs final last season. Now her focus is on her club career.
“I’m loving it. There are different challenges this year in terms of English-qualified players and how many overseas players can be in a team, so that has brought a new element to take into consideration each week.
“You really have to be on top of your game at the moment to take up one of those valuable spots, so it has been good. It’s been tough but it is a new challenge and I have been enjoying it. We’re building up nicely to it again.”
The last few years have been difficult for Ireland, collecting the wooden spoon after losing all their matches in the 2023 campaign.
“It was a tough tournament. It is very easy to say you are going to tune out everything that is said about you on the papers or online but the reality is that we all live in a world where we see everything every day, on our phones, so that is just not possible.
“You can never question anyone’s dedication to what we were trying to do and it wasn’t a case that we were going out to intentionally get the results we got or perform to the level we wanted to get to.
“You couldn’t fault anyone’s heart or desire to be there and to keep fighting and that was the thing that drove a lot of us on. We were all in it and we were in it together and we weren’t going to be giving up.”
Despite the disappointment of the Six Nations campaign, Fryday could look back on plenty of highlights on her Ireland career in the secondrow.
“[My highlight] was probably the November series against the USA, one of Ciara Griffin’s last games, and I would have been very close to Ciara throughout our playing time together. For us it was the end of a cycle that had the disappointment of Italy [and failing to qualify for the World Cup] but we had all come together again in November to kind of have one last outing with those players that retired after that.
“That core group of players was probably together for the guts of four or five years and we were good friends so that November series does stick out for me.”
Team of the Year: Ireland’s Men’s Team
Men’s Sevens Player of the Year: Harry McNulty
Women’s Sevens Player of the Year: Lucy Mulhall
Club of the Year: Clogher Valley
Outstanding contribution through fundraising: Alex Soroka
Rugby Writers of Ireland Hall of Fame: Lynne Cantwell and David Humphreys
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