Women’s 15s

We run a Performance Rugby program and our female athletes compete at the highest level of competition in Ireland.

We provide a high standard of coaching, athletic development, S&C, nutrition support, medical support, data analysis, and video analysis.

We have the most experienced and successful coaching team in the country, including former internationals at both 15s and 7s, as well as the use of specialist coaches.  This team has developed over 60 athletes to achieve representative honours, many of whom started rugby with the club or achieved those honours after joining.

Our S&C coach completes full monitoring of the athletes in our program, with gym, speed, recovery, resilience and contact prep sessions programmed on our Teambuildr platform.

S&C takes place in our facility on-site. However, the Teambuildr platform allows delivery of programs directly to our athletes’ phone. This allows performance monitoring and remote training, where required.

This is particularly useful for athletes whose schedule or location does not allow them to make the group session, often our student athletes at college outside Dublin or those whose work requirements mean they need to fit their S&C sessions in on their own time.

Nutrition and recovery is an important part of our program.  Our in-house chef is on site four days a week to prepare hot meals for our athletes.  These are nutritionally balanced to aid in recovery.  These are provided after our two ‘heavy’ or high RPE training days on Tuesday & Thursdays, where we expect our athletes to train twice a day, and on match days.  We also provide nutrition guidance to our athletes and their families with a series of talks and information sheets.

Menstruation and the athlete is an essential consideration of elite women’s sport and we run a number of education sessions each year to allow our athletes understand the impact on their training and bodies.  Our coaches attend these sessions and have had specific sessions for coaches.

Our Player Welfare team provide full medical and physio support to our athletes, with pre, post and match day support. We have two on-site physio clinics per week, as well as a match-day doctor and physio. The team also use the Teambuildr platform for prehabilitation and rehabilitation programs. 

We monitor athlete wellness through on the Teambuildr platform and this information is fed through to coaches in planning training sessions.  ‘At risk’ athletes are contacted directly by the coaches and managed appropriately.

We complete video analysis using two Capturemasts and games are coded on Hudl for athlete review and coach feedback.  We complete data analysis on all games to allow our athletes to enhance their tactical understanding of the game.

We run exchange programs with other high-performance clubs in Australia, USA, England, Canada, Spain and France where we send a number of athletes every year to aid in their development and gain international experience.

We have strong relationships with the national coaches in other countries, who send their athletes to us to develop. We believe experiencing other cultures can be of tremendous benefit to the athlete involved and to our athletes in our program.   

We also play regular matches against English and French opposition.

Our 15s program runs from September to May, where our 1st XV play in the All-Ireland League and our 2nd XV play in Leinster League Division 1.

We are interested in recruiting athletes who are interested in Performance Rugby and have ambition, dedication and coachability.

Athletes in our program generally come from our age-grade or futures programs, are crossover athletes who take up the sport in adulthood, or join us from other clubs to play performance rugby.

This is often athletes graduating from age-grade rugby or from junior/participation rugby and who have the ambition and interest to partake in a full-time performance program.  

We take a multi-year approach to the development of the athlete.  Our experience tells us continuity and a view longer than short-term or one season success is essential to the long-term development of the athlete.  The athlete is involved in this multi-year approach through self-reflection & completion of Individual Performance Plans (IPPs) and regular one-on-one meeting with the coaches to aid in self-reflection and finalisation of IPPs.   

We are particularly interested in recruiting athletes who have the ambition to play in the Six Nations, WXVs and make the Ireland World Cup squads in 2025 and 2029 and with whom we can work with to achieve those goals.

We have excellent relationships with the IRFU High Performance Unit and we meet and speak regularly with the national coaches at both 15s and 7s. 

We limit the number of athletes in our program to approximately 58/62 athletes in any one season.  We do not exceed this in order to maintain appropriate player/coach ratios to ensure the quality of the program, as well to ensure appropriate game & training time to develop the athletes.  The goals of our program is to allow our players to become the best they can be, perform at the highest level in Ireland, and to produce Ireland 15s and 7s internationals. 

We have good relationships with participation rugby clubs in our community, where athletes at an earlier stage of their development may play at the appropriate level, if required.

Please contact us to discuss joining our program.