This summer is a rugby summer for Linda Djougang. Contracted to play in the upcoming Rugby World Cup, it seems like a stark contrast that when not lining out for Ireland in the frontrow, she works as a theatre nurse in Tallaght University Hospital.
Then again, specific, comprehensive care in a specialised unit could easily describe the work of a prop scrumming down to leverage angles and pressure points.
For the 29-year-old, who grew up in Cameroon before moving to Rush in north Dublin as an eight-year-old, there are very real similarities between the theatre and the arena.
Timing, process, encouragement, resourcefulness and maybe even triage. Administering anaesthesia is, thankfully, no longer part of the modern game.
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Ireland’s World Cup: limping to the start line or a golden opportunity?
“Oh massively,” she says. “I think it is so important. I always feel what I do in nursing is the same as in rugby. For me now, I have experience on the field but what I gain from nursing I can put into rugby.
“Like the team working, being sharp, the quick decisions on and off the field, being precise, quick thinking. I problem-solve and usually that’s what happens on the field.
“When it comes to a penalty, what do we do next? When you play, who’s going to stand up and make the decisions?”
Djougang is a former track-and-field athlete. By the time she was in Trinity College, she had still barely heard of rugby. Then she signed up for tag rugby to meet people. Bang, that was it.
First she was a flanker, then a loosehead and now a tighthead. She travels to Franklin’s Gardens, Northampton, for Ireland’s first Pool C match against Japan as the most experienced player on the Irish squad with 48 caps.
If Djougang lines out against Japan and then Spain, she will be the only player on the team to potentially face New Zealand in Brighton for the final pool game with 50 caps.
“I think now it is really the mentality and mindset that goes in, it’s so important,” she says. “It’s really the mentality and sometimes caps don’t represent . . . yeah, you have the experience, but experience is really what you face in front of you. I think last year in Vancouver it really opened our eyes, where we played the likes of New Zealand and were able to beat them.
“We had less caps then. Now we have grown and gained even more experience, and I think it just shows the players sometimes have to forget about the caps. It’s more about our mindset and ability to focus on what’s in front of us.”
Vancouver last year was the WXV1 tournament. Launched in 2023, it consists of three tiers of nations. Djougang and her team-mates were in Tier 1 as one of the three top sides in last year’s Six Nations championship.
Ireland secured a sensational, last-gasp 29-27 win over world champions New Zealand in their opening match. Replacement Erin King, who is injured and not travelling to the World Cup, scored her second try of the game to level the scores in the final minute, with outhalf Dannah O’Brien kicking the decisive conversion off the upright.
The scalp of the Black Ferns was transformative for the Irish team in their thinking and expectations. With the win, the dial turned sharply.
“We were the underdog going into Tier 1 in Vancouver in the WXV1,” says Djougang.
“People saw that we were kind of worried going and playing against the likes of New Zealand, Canada and USA – top-tier teams.
“But we came second in Vancouver. No one thought that. I think people saw us then as underdogs, but the fact that we beat the world champions . . . we came from 10th in the world to fifth now, so I think we have lost that underdog title.
“We don’t want to be underdogs. I think that we want every team to know that. Respect us because we’ve shown what we are capable of. We won’t be going into this World Cup as underdogs.”
The intensity of the group springs from a World Cup four years ago that Ireland didn’t attend, a defeat to Scotland in the qualifiers sending the team spiralling into relative obscurity, or, certainly to the fringes of the first order of teams. Ten of the current squad were involved in the game.
The feeling then of a World Cup taking place in New Zealand without Ireland was that something hugely important had passed them by.
It makes the next few weeks even more freighted and crucially places Ireland back in the centre of the rugby world – a position where the players believe they have a right to be.
“It makes it feel extra-special, especially with the 10 of us that have been through that journey, and we know how we felt in Parma,” says Djougang speaking at the Specsavers Media Day.
“I feel that we appreciate it even more, because we know what the journey was and we know what we’ve been through. Sometimes, for you to really appreciate something, you have to have that. I think it’s something that really connects us even more, the fact that we have now an opportunity to do something that we always wanted.”
Four long years of wait and finally a summer of rugby in the World Cup arena.
