Ward, son of former Ireland and Ulster back row Andy, only made his debut for his province in October, but caught the eye across 20 appearances for Richie Murphy’s side through their run to the Challenge Cup final, ending the season with a first Test cap.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s something I’ve dreamed of for a long time, and to go out there and do it today, it was really special,” Ward said at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, Australia.<\/p>\n
The back row was one of four players to make their debuts against Japan, coming on for the final 19 minutes with the game still hanging in the balance, and helped steer Ireland home to a 36-20 victory, their second bonus-point win from two games in the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n
“I was pretty nervous sitting on the bench, biting my fingernails waiting to get on, but no, I was delighted when I got out there and got a taste for international rugby. It was unreal.<\/p>\n
“It’s obviously my first season professionally this year so it’s been an unreal season and to top it off with the cap there is unbelievable. But it makes me so hungry for next year and I can’t wait to get back and rip in.”<\/p>\n
![\"11](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024ae2d-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Ward (above) wasn\u2019t even meant to be in Australia with Ireland this summer.<\/p>\n
While he had been involved in the wider squad during the Six Nations, the versatile back row hadn\u2019t been included in the initial 36-man squad for this summer\u2019s tour, before injuries to Caelan Doris and Tommy O\u2019Brien saw Ward, as well as his older brother Zac, drafted into the squad two days before they departed for Australia.<\/p>\n
And he revealed the phone call from Andy Farrell came during a shopping trip in Brown Thomas.<\/p>\n
“So the squad obviously came out on the Friday and I was down in Dublin actually doing a bit of shopping and Zac rang me and was like, ‘I’ve been called into the squad,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018No way, unreal.\u2019<\/p>\n
“I didn\u2019t really think much of it. I thought Caelan would have been OK with his injury, but Faz then rang me about 10 minutes later to say that he wanted to bring me on tour and it’s a phone call I’ll always remember.<\/p>\n
“Having Zac here as well has been unbelievable. We’ve actually been rooming together the last couple of weeks, so I haven’t really had a whole chance to get away from him.<\/p>\n
“But yeah, it was brilliant to have him here as well and special to get a couple of photos and stuff there in the changing room was class,” he added.<\/p>\n
Another emotional phone call followed this week, this time back to the family in Ireland to reveal he would be making his debut against Japan.<\/p>\n
![\"11](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024ae2e-614.jpg\"\/)
\nBilly Bohan, Sean Jansen, Sam Illo and Bryn Ward with their first international caps<\/p>\n
“I was delighted, to be honest. When you say you have an inkling, you can never know whether you’re going to get picked or not, so I didn’t really have too much of a hope whether I was going to or not.<\/p>\n
“I was just sort of training away, keeping my head down and after they named the training teams on Monday and things like that there, I thought I might have had a chance, but then the squad was announced on Wednesday to us and I was over the moon.<\/p>\n
“It was a brilliant phone call home to my mum, a few tears on the phone to her, but, yeah, not in front of the boys!”<\/p>\n
Ward and the Ireland squad will leave Australia on Sunday evening, with Auckland the final destination of the season, where they face the All Blacks next Saturday.<\/p>\n
But he is already thinking about next season, and doing his best to make sure he\u2019s back in Australia with Ireland at the World Cup in 2027.<\/p>\n
“Going into a World Cup year, there\u2019s no better time to try and peak, so I’ll be doing everything I can to train well and ultimately put out performances for Ulster that then hopefully get into Irish camps and autumn internationals and Six Nations and then hopefully on the World Cup, but I’m not looking ahead of myself too much.<\/p>\n
“I’ll get back to Ulster after this campaign and have a massive pre-season and try and get as much work as I can done before the season starts and then try and hit the ground running come the URC.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Ireland international Bryn Ward says winning his first Ireland cap has made him hungry for even more.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-544925","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\/544925","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=544925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}