THE NEXT COUPLE of weeks are set to be testing ones for Ireland women\u2019s international Robyn O\u2019Connor as she looks to strike the ideal balance between her sporting and college lives.<\/p>\n
A try-scorer on her Ireland 15s debut against Italy in the Women\u2019s Six Nations at Dexcom Stadium on 18 April, O\u2019Connor also featured on the left-wing when Scott Bemand\u2019s side lost out to France at Stade Marcel-Michelin in Clermont seven days later.<\/p>\n
She will also don the number 11 jersey at Affidea Stadium in Belfast this evening as Ireland return from a fallow week in the Championship with a round four showdown against Wales.<\/p>\n
There is also the small matter of a closing round encounter with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium tomorrow week (17 May), but the 20-year-old won\u2019t be focusing solely on rugby in the build-up to that fixture.<\/p>\n
A business management student at TU Dublin, O\u2019Connor has five exams to sit in a short space of time \u2014 albeit two of them will take place in the week that follows the Scotland game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey start next week, and they\u2019re all done in the space of a week, so it\u2019s going to be pretty intense. TUD have been very good at working around the training schedule, so I don\u2019t miss any training sessions,\u201d O\u2019Connor explained at the IRFU High Performance Centre on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the college have been quite good at letting me sit [exams]. Because, for example, TUD have five campuses. I\u2019m in Aungier Street, and there\u2019s a campus at Blanchardstown, which is a 10-minute drive from here. So I\u2019m allowed to sit some of my exams there, which makes it a lot easier. So I\u2019ll be able to zip over and zip back.\u201d<\/p>\n
While O\u2019Connor is a relative newcomer at senior test level, she has been a regular visitor to the IRFU High Performance Centre in recent years.<\/p>\n
After being announced as one of 37 female players on central contracts with the IRFU in August 2024, she later made her bow with the Ireland Women\u2019s 7s for the Dubai leg of the HSBC SVNS Series that took place from 30 November to 1 December in the same year.<\/p>\n
Earlier in 2024, O\u2019Connor (who has also represented the Ireland U20s in recent times) was named in an initial 35-strong squad that Ireland 15s head coach Bemand selected ahead of a test international against Australia at Belfast in mid-September and the subsequent WXV 1 tournament that kicked off in Vancouver a little over a fortnight later.<\/p>\n
Although she didn\u2019t make the final squad that travelled over to Canada for the latter, O\u2019Connor took an awful lot from that early experience in the 15s set-up as well as her time with the 7s programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was following the Interpros, and I came in. It was my first time being around the 15s national set-up. I think I\u2019ve definitely built a lot from then to now. I became a lot more confident in myself, but it was still a great experience to be in and around the girls. Learning from them, learning from the coaches. Being in a high-performance environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like 7s, it\u2019s a great sport for fine-tuning all those skills. Your passing, your tackling. Which is very helpful when you\u2019re an edge player in 15s because you\u2019re going to get those one-on-one tackles that you have to make. Those crucial moments on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite now being part of a senior international set-up, O\u2019Connor\u2019s sporting prowess has extended beyond rugby in the past.<\/p>\n
The GAA and her club of Glynn Barntown would have been a big passion for the Wexford native when she was younger, but the influence of her father, James, ensured she grew a strong interest in the oval ball game.<\/p>\n
Their current Director of Rugby, the elder O\u2019Connor has been heavily involved with Wexford Wanderers RFC for a number of years, and this is where her daughter\u2019s journey in the sport first began.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe puts his heart and soul into the club. He\u2019s the one who really got me involved to start my rugby journey. He was kind of always at me in my ear. Because I always would have been big on GAA and I never really wanted to go towards the direction of a rugby ball, but he was always encouraging me to join, and I did,\u201d O\u2019Connor added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have played senior camogie with Glynn Barntown and then a bit of football there with the junior team as well. That was kind of my first step up from underage sports to senior level. That definitely helped me a lot in terms of bridging the gap between the physicality levels.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE NEXT COUPLE of weeks are set to be testing ones for Ireland women\u2019s international Robyn O\u2019Connor as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138619,61,60,4710,102,43,177184,3654,4381],"class_list":["post-439836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-busy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-republic","tag-italy","tag-news","tag-robyn-oconnor","tag-rugby","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}