In 2019 Irish hockey hatched an idea to use a pop-up pitch in Energia Park, the Leinster rugby grounds in Donnybrook. The pitch cost €250,000 and hosted the Olympic Games playoff matches between the Irish women’s team and Canada.
The 100m long and 60m wide reusable pitch had been installed in the Twickenham Stoop for matches involving Britain and New Zealand before it arrived in Dublin in June of that year.
The matches were played over two miserable evenings with over 12,000 fans turning up in the rain to watch Ireland win the series and qualify for Tokyo 2020, reaching the Olympics for the first time.
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The attendance figures for the two games broke down to 6,047 and 6,137 fans, both setting records for a women’s international sporting event in Ireland.
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Earlier that year, the women’s Irish rugby team played against a newly professionalised England in their opening Six Nations game in the same ground.
According to the IRFU report in February of that year, a record crowd of 4,637 turned up for the fixture, which England won 51-7.
Previously, one match in the women’s Six Nations had been played in the Aviva Stadium, when the men’s game finished. The optics of that arrangement were not good, as tens of thousands flooded out of the ground after the final whistle of the first match
[ Ireland’s women ready to push on in final Six Nations tie against ScotlandOpens in new window ]
There was scepticism around at the time about women playing rugby. Part of that was tradition and part that the women’s game had not developed enough or was not supported sufficiently to grab people’s interest.
It took several incidents – embarrassing for the IRFU, and belittling for the players – to highlight systematic inequalities in treatment between the men and women.
For example, in 2012 the team was forced to take an overnight train for the 800km trip from Paris to Pau on a Friday, having missed their original train after getting caught up in traffic in the French capital.
After three hours sleep, the Irish team were eating their prematch meal before facing France in Pau. Incredibly, Ireland only lost the game by a solitary point.
In another incident in 2021, Ulster and Connacht players had to get changed beside waste bins before an interprovincial derby.
Later that year, a signed letter of complaint from the Irish women players to the Irish Government outlining why there was a loss of “all trust and confidence in the IRFU” ripped through the rugby establishment in Ireland.
Now, five years later here is where we are.
Ticket sales for Sunday’s final 2026 Six Nations match against Scotland reached 30,000 by Thursday lunchtime. That figure is more than three times the record 9,206 fans who took in Ireland’s opening 2026 Six Nations 57-20 win over Italy in April at Connacht’s Dexcom Stadium.
The current side have been getting used to the growth in interest. Although several of the players, including captain Erin King, Beibhinn Parsons and Eve Higgins, have come through the Sevens system and in the last Olympic Games in Paris played in front of 69,000, the record ticket sales for the game against Scotland this weekend should augur well for future games to be played in the Aviva.
An interesting aspect of the current prosperity is the make-up of the fans who attend the women’s matches. Family orientated with more women and children in the ground, it is not dissimilar to the crowd that attend Katie Taylor boxing events.
On Sunday part of the package for the day is a Family Fun Zone, which opens at midday on the back pitch of the stadium in Lansdowne RFC, a few hours before the 2.30pm kick-off.
Ticket prices are competitive too with stands seats costing €27.95 for adults, about four times cheaper than similar seats for the men’s match earlier this year against Scotland.
Given that the first IRFU contracts were only handed to Irish women in 2022, the brisk upward trajectory is hard to miss.
When current coach Scott Bemand was appointed that year, Ireland were preparing to play in WXV3, the third tier of international rugby. They beat Kazakhstan 109-0, Colombia 64-3, and Spain 15-13 to win the Dubai tournament.
Ireland are now ranked fifth in the world and will compete in a new format, the WXV Global Series, this September-October which features the top 12 teams in the world.
It has been a long and winding road.
“We talk about our green wave a lot and how much that means to us and how inspiring the next generation is a big part of why we do what we do,” said captain Erin King on Monday. “To break the [attendance] record and to break it pretty well is really inspiring stuff.”
By the numbers alone, the Irish wave is surging.
