The Wolfhounds became the first side to book a semi-final place in the 2025-26 Celtic Challenge with a comprehensive 44-10 victory over Gwalia Lightning in Cork on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The hosts, who boasted 10 Irish internationals including new captain Erin King in their starting line-up, ran in eight tries across the game, including three in the opening seven minutes.<\/p>\n
Maggie Boylan, Eve Higgins and Vicky Elmes Kinlan all crossed in the early going, although fly-half Dannah O’Brien missed the conversion of all three scores to keep her side’s lead to 15-0.<\/p>\n
Carys Hughes got the Lightning on the board with a penalty but the Wolfhounds scored three further tries before half-time with India Daley, Aoibheann Reilly and Fiona Tuite getting over for scores that gave their side a 32-3 half-time lead.<\/p>\n
The second half was a more even affair with 24 minutes passing after the restart before replacement Maebh Clenaghan crashed over from a powerful maul.<\/p>\n
The Ulster hooker scored her second off the bench, this time off a short line-out, with 12 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
Gwalia, who came into this round of fixtures second in the standings, scored a late consolation try through Chloe Thomas-Bradley in the 77th minute.<\/p>\n
The victory means the defending champions have recorded six consecutive bonus-point wins in the competition and have secured their play-off spot with four games to spare.<\/p>\n
Six points ahead of their fellow Irish side Clovers, Neill Alcorn’s side will be seeking to secure home advantage in the semi-finals when their competition resumes against Glasgow Warriors on February 15.<\/p>\n
One day prior, the Lightning host Clovers who are one place and two points above them in the table in what will be a key fixture for play-off permutations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wolfhounds became the first side to book a semi-final place in the 2025-26 Celtic Challenge with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-452170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}