{"id":455104,"date":"2026-05-18T15:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455104\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T15:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:59:11","slug":"irelands-female-rugby-stars-receive-cap-numbers-at-long-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455104\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland&#8217;s female rugby stars receive cap numbers at long last"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a historic weekend for the girls in green following a standalone fixture at the Aviva Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Some 30,000 spectators descended on the Dublin stadium on Sunday to watch the Irish women&#8217;s rugby team win against Scotland.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/evoke.ie\/2026\/05\/12\/news\/sport\/ireland-rugby-erin-king-historic-game\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Women&#8217;s Six Nations clash<\/a> saw Ireland triumph with a score of 54 to 5.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/irelandvscotland.jpg\" alt=\"rugby international\" class=\"wp-image-2145738\"  \/>17 May 2026; Aoife Wafer of Ireland during the Women&#8217;s 6 Nations Rugby Championship match between Ireland and Scotland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Shauna Clinton\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p>It was a day to remember, but was also a poignant day for the women that have lined out for Ireland before. <\/p>\n<p>Appearing on Ireland AM on Monday, former rugby international Fiona Hayes detailed her delight at finally getting a cap number for her country. <\/p>\n<p>A cap number refers to a player&#8217;s chronological rank among all who have ever represented their national team.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3462339.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2145739\"  \/>17 May 2026; Stacey Flood of Ireland during the Women&#8217;s 6 Nations Rugby Championship match between Ireland and Scotland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Shauna Clinton\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p>Irish player number one would be the first person to ever line out for their country, followed by two and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on Ireland AM, Fiona shared: &#8216;It was an unbelievable atmosphere [on Sunday], the girls were in flying form after winning, but yesterday we all got our cap number.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;For ex-internationals, they unveiled our cap number&#8230; so I&#8217;m an Irish player 176.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;The game was on and then they did this big thing for all the ex-players to feel part of it, so it was one hell of a night.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Fellow former rugby international <a href=\"http:\/\/www.extra.ie\/tag\/tommy-bowe\" target=\"_blank\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"www.extra.ie\/tag\/tommy-bowe\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Tommy Bowe<\/a> proceeded to ask Fiona if they had any cap numbers before Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Fiona responded: &#8216;Lynne Cantwell went in this year and she spent months and months going through everyone&#8217;s from that first game in 1993 til now.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/fionahayes.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2145740\"  \/>Ireland&#8217;s Fiona Hayes. Pic: \u00a9INPHO\/Donall Farmer<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We all found out &#8212; they unveiled a board, and we all found out our number.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Tommy went on to laud the moment as &#8216;historic&#8217; but conceded: &#8216;It&#8217;s sad that it&#8217;s taken until now to happen, but fair play to Lynne for making it happen.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s been a historic weekend for the girls in green following a standalone fixture at the Aviva Stadium.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-455104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455104","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=455104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}