{"id":492926,"date":"2026-06-10T18:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492926\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:49:16","slug":"womens-six-nations-irelands-aoife-wafer-retains-player-of-the-championship-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492926\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Six Nations: Ireland’s Aoife Wafer retains Player of the Championship award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland forward Aoife Wafer has been named the Women’s Six Nations Player of the Championship for 2026, becoming the first player to win the award in successive years.<\/p>\n

The back row earned 40% of a fans’ vote for the 2026 tournament to beat England’s Grand Slam-winning captain Meg Jones, Italy back row Francesca Sgorbini and France scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Wafer topped the vote<\/a> ahead of France second row Manae Feleu, England wing Abby Dow and Scotland back row Evie Gallagher.<\/p>\n

This year, the 23-year-old started all five games at number eight as Ireland finished third behind England and France for the third year in a row.<\/p>\n

The Harlequins player finished the tournament with five tries, surpassing the four she managed in 2025, and made 78 carries, the most of any forward.<\/p>\n

“I don’t even know what to say,” said Wafer. <\/p>\n

“Last year I was the first ever Irish woman and the youngest to do it, and to back it up is pretty special. <\/p>\n

“The girls back home will agree with me that these sort of things don’t happen without them. I’m just grateful that I’m part of an incredible team, and I get to come back to Quins and be a part of an incredible team here too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland forward Aoife Wafer has been named the Women’s Six Nations Player of the Championship for 2026, becoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-492926","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\/492926","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=492926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}