RUGBY: AINE DONNELLY INTERVIEW
Donnelly pleased with Six Nations debut
By Daire Walsh
IT was a bright start to the RBS Women’s Six Nations for Kildare native Aine Donnelly in Donnybrook last Saturday afternoon, when she featured at outside centre for Ireland in their 21-3 triumph over Wales/ This was only Donnelly’s second official appearance at international level, and her very first in the Championship.
Although she acknowleged that she wasn’t in possession of the ball to any great degree, she was nevertheless happy with her own performance in front of her friends and family at the south Dublin venue.
“Yeah, actually it was a good team performance. Started well, so it’s a good one to get the first win out playing in Donnybrook. It’s my first time playing there as well, so it was great to have the home crowd cheering us on,” Donnelly remarked.
“Personally, yeah, I was happy enough with my own performance. I was more defensive, we did a lot of defending even though we had a lot of possession.
“I didn’t really get a whole lot of the ball, but defensively I did well. I was happy enough. Hopefully next day then, I can try to get more involved in the attack, but it was great to run out there. Home crowd, and have friends and family there supporting us. It was a great atmosphere.”
Donnelly had big shoes to fill heading into this game, as she was directly replacing her fellow Lilywhite compatriot, Jenny Murphy. The Kilcullen star was on Sevens duty in Australia along with a host of other recognised faces, and Donnelly was aware of the presence that Murphy has had in the Irish team in recent campaigns.
“We’d be slightly different players, as in she would take the ball on. She’s a very strong runner with the ball. I knew going into the game that she was a fairly big name there with the Irish team. I was just trying to play my own game.”
“I’m happy enough. I moved to the same club as her as well [Old Belvedere], and she was aware I was playing that position as well. I’d say she probably thinks I’m following her around a bit!” When she isn’t preparing for international rugby action, Donnelly works with AIB in Swords on Dublin’s northside. She said that they have been extremely accommodating in terms of getting time off to concentrate on her rugby, but the 28-year-old is still able to build something of a separation between work and sport.
“I work in AIB up in Swords, in a Retail Park. Work have been great. They’ve given me any time off that I’ve needed. If I do need time off during the day, or things like that, they’ve been good to me. We train in the morning, then train in the evening, and then we have camp at the weekends. There’s plenty of time to be able to get my head around things like that.”
“When I’m in work, I try to just forget about the rugby for a while, and then after work kind of go back to what I need to work on. I tried to keep them separate a bit.”
Last Saturday certainly represented a positive start to the defence of their Six Nations crown for Ireland, but this weekend’s clash with France in Aime Giral should prove to be a major step up.
Donnelly was quick to pin-point the areas they will need to improve on ahead of this tricky encounter, and that their preparation for the game will start with tomorrow’s review session.
“We had a brief talk there on Saturday. We didn’t get in too deep in it, but we’re meeting up on Wednesday there, so we’ll go through the video, and there’s a few things in attack that we probably need to work on. Defence was okay, it was good, so hopefully we can continue that.”
“Then probably work on our attack, we had a few more chances where we probably should have gotten a few more scores. We just didn’t take the right option, hopefully when we review it, we’ll be able to work out that in the next few days,” Donnelly added.