McMahon eager to get going after injury robbed her of 2023 involvement
Following the disappointment of missing out on last year’s tournament, Edel McMahon is excited by the prospect of embarking on another Six Nations Championship odyssey with the Ireland women’s rugby team.
An international debutant off the bench in the closing moments of Ireland’s second-round victory at home to Italy in the 2018 Six Nations, the Clare native was originally named in a 32-player squad for Ireland’s 2023 campaign.
However, she subsequently sustained a toe injury in the lead-up to their opening game with Wales in Cardiff and was ultimately ruled out for the entirety of a tournament that saw Ireland falling to five consecutive defeats.
Yet McMahon did return to the fold for their successful journey through the inaugural WXV 3 in Dubai last October and with a fresh look to the squad under head coach Scott Bemand, she is eager to kick-start the 2024 Six Nations against France at Stade Marie-Marvingt in Le Mans this Saturday.
“It’s difficult always to miss a Six Nations. Literally just two weeks before the campaign, getting over the hurdle of getting selected and picking up an injury that rules you out for the whole campaign can be quite tough,” McMahon remarked at a press conference in Abbotstown earlier today.
“Obviously from my own personal mindset, I’m really excited to get going and getting back into this campaign, playing a Six Nations. Also, it’s a new squad, a new coaching set-up, a new training identity, off the back of a positive tournament in Dubai for us. We’re quite excited to get going.”
In addition to featuring at openside flanker in successive triumphs at the expense of Kazakhstan, Colombia and Spain, last year’s aforementioned WXV 3 also saw McMahon serving as co-captain of the Ireland women’s team alongside second-row Sam Monaghan.
The now-retired Nichola Fryday had previously acted as skipper for the 2022 and 2023 Six Nations Championships – as well as the two-test tour of Japan that was held in between those campaigns – but Bemand opted for a joint leadership approach upon taking over from Greg McWilliams as Irish head coach last summer.
While there are some challenges that come with having dual captains, McMahon feels that she and her former Wasps team-mate Monaghan are striking the right balance at the moment.
“We keep getting asked this question. It’s quite funny and we don’t even know how it works, because it just does! It just works. The two of us work well together. Work well on the pitch, work well off the pitch,” McMahon added.
“We share the roles even within the squad as well, so we don’t take it all on ourselves. We have good staff that help us along that way and help guide us to solutions to challenges that we come up against.
“As a whole, the squad is really helpful in sharing those delegations. At the moment it has been working really well. It has been a pleasure.
“Logistically for WXV, we did have to nominate a captain of the day. For the coin toss, speaking to the ref, but it’s kind of up to the ref as well. We will check in to see if both of us can speak to her or him. If they say ‘yeah’, we will both send messages in.
“If there is one designated, we’ll just honour that captaincy role of the match day and then feed messages in through that person.”