HAVING WRESTLED WITH the idea of bringing her career as a high performance rugby player to an end just a few short weeks ago, Eimear Considine has admitted it comes as a ‘big shock’ to find herself back in the starting line-up for the Ireland women’s rugby team.

Considine was away from rugby for an extended spell following her most recent appearance in green – a Six Nations Championship clash with England on 24 April, 2022 – due to a combination of picking up a medial collateral ligament injury in the same game and the subsequent arrival of her son Caolán.

She returned to the field of play roughly 12 weeks after giving birth to Caolán in January 2023, but was unfortunately back on the treatment table after sustaining an anterior cruciate ligament injury in Munster’s defeat to Leinster in a Women’s Interprovincial Championship final on 2 September of that year.

Following an elongated recovery period – and a hamstring-related set-back just as the competition was about to get underway – Considine finally returned off the bench in Munster’s third round win over Connacht in this year’s Interpros and also made a cameo appearance in their second successive decider loss to Leinster at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast a fortnight ago.

The thought had crossed her mind that this might be her final game at provincial or international level, but an injury to Connacht’s Meabh Deely led to her being drafted back into the Irish set-up. Such is the impression she made upon her return to the international fold, that Ireland head coach Scott Bemand has named Considine at full-back in his team to face Australia at Kingspan later on today [KO 2.30pm, live on TG4].

“It’s a big shock, it really is. I had accepted that my game against Leinster was going to be my last game with Munster and that could be my last game with high performance. I was happy to just walk off a pitch on my own terms. In my own eyes, I ended my Irish career with being stretchered off against England,” Considine explained.

“My Munster career would have ended last year getting stretchered off against Leinster, so I kind of wanted to finish on my own terms. I had it in my head that two weekends ago was my last rugby match. Genuinely when I say I don’t believe it that I’m in here, I don’t believe it that I’m in here.

“Interpros is another year, it’s another year later. Club is fine to play and that, but I was the oldest by far on that Munster squad and I looked around the changing room at some stage and they were just doing TikTok. They were talking about things that I just didn’t know about and I was just like, ‘I think my time here is done!’

“I suppose the year previous I had a dream to come back to play for Ireland. Then the knee happened and then I just thought it was too far gone. I thought two years out of the game was just too far, but here I am.”

Now that she finds herself embarking on an unexpected second chapter with Ireland, Considine is ready to embrace every moment that comes her way. While today’s 150th anniversary Test against Australia is her primary focus, the Clare woman has expressed an interest in being part of the travelling Irish party for the forthcoming WXV 1 tournament in Vancouver.

Additionally, having featured in her country’s last appearance at the tournament back in 2017, Considine acknowledges it would be a dream scenario to still be on board for the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England next year.

Committing to a trip to Canada is easier said than done when you’re already juggling the demands of having a young family with your day job as a PE and Irish teacher at St Joseph’s Secondary School Spanish Point – she is currently taking time off from this post and will need to do so again if she makes the WXV 1 squad – but Considine is confident of coming up with a suitable arrangement if it comes to that.

“If I was selected, it’s something that I would be interested in doing. I’d have to try and make the rest of the things work, but the hardest part is getting selected. If that happens, I can look at the other arrangements around that. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy and I’m already missing him after a week, but he’ll be proud of Mammy!” Considine added.

“Dean [Ryan, her husband] sends me a video every morning of him saying ‘Go, go, Mammy!’ We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s a really exciting year to be involved. One World Cup is cool, but it would be class to look at another one. Especially when we didn’t qualify for the last one and that was such a disappointment.

“Probably one of the lowest bits of my career was Parma [unsuccessful World Cup qualifying tournament]. We don’t really want to talk about Parma, but it was. Because it had been pushed out because of Covid and then you’re training away with the cherry that you’re going to qualify for this World Cup and then you don’t. It was hard.”

Daire Walsh