Ireland

Our Bid

2023

News

In front of a large crowd, Trinity saw off a spirited UCC side to win the inaugural Kay Bowen Trophy at College Park last Saturday in a highly entertaining and competitive game.

The Kay Bowen Trophy is named in honour of Kay Bowen, a past President of Dublin University Football Club.

The game started at a furious pace with Trinity applying most of the early pressure with Louise Sullivan, in particular, making several strong line-breaking carries.

However, the UCC defence - led from the front by number 8 Hannah Lane and marshalled by scrum half and captain Mona Feehily - stood firm.

The deadlock was eventually broken after 21 minutes. Trinity centre Amanda Shauvlin cut through the UCC midfield cover and laid off to right winger Aoife Ruane who made 20 metres to set up a ruck close to the UCC whitewash.

From the resulting breakdown, number 6 and captain Tara Deane picked and drove at the UCC defence and laid off for prop Louise Sullivan to crash over for the opening score.

The match-winning score came in the 48th minute when great midfield interplay between Trinity full-back Annika Dennehy and Shauvlin released Ruane who outpaced the UCC cover to touch down in the corner.

UCC rallied and began a period of sustained pressure in the Trinity 22, with UCC's Kelly McGuiness, in particular, making several great breaks. The Trinity defence could not be breached however and Trinity closed the game out on a 10-0 scoreline

Kay Bowen presented the trophy pitchside to the winning captain Tara Deane and thanked both sides for the quality of the game played, noting that the final had been a wonderful advert for Women's intervarsity rugby and had set a very high bar for the finals to come.

The Irish Universities Rugby Union is the representative organisation of University rugby union clubs in Ireland. Member clubs include UCD, DUFC, UCC and QUB and NUIG

The Irish Universities Rugby Union organises the following competitions annually in the following grades:

Senior, The Dudley Cup
Under-21, The Conroy Cup
Ladies, The Kay Bowen Trophy
Junior 2-3, The Maughan-Scally Cup

The Irish Universities Rugby Union can be contacted at irishunisrugby@gmail.com.

Monday was community legacy day at Women's Rugby World Cup 2017 as the IRFU's 'Spirit of Rugby' programme brought together some local disability rugby players from DLSP Eagles, Seapoint Dragons and Westmanstown Wasps, and a number of WRWC players and coaches from the competing nations, for a fun-filled coaching/training session and Tag rugby games.

Marie Louise Reilly joined her Ireland team-mates Nora Stapleton and Lindsay Peat at a recent Dublin City Council event in support of the upcoming Women's Rugby World Cup. Reilly, who works as a DCC Sports Officer, said: "The team are coming together really well, we're working hard and hopefully August will be really memorable not just for us but for the whole country."

Speaking ahead of Saturday's second Test against Japan, Ireland tour captain Rhys Ruddock said: "We've been happy with the results so far, and there's been bits of the performances we've been really happy with and some bits that we're looking to improve on. Tomorrow marks the last opportunity to go out and do that, so we're all really excited about getting out there now."

Speaking about working with the provinces and monitoring players' progress, Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt told RTE Radio 1: "For us, having the best quality of performance within the provinces, getting some really good coaching from the provincial coaches, which we know is happening at the moment, that's the foundation that we need because in the end we get the players in a match week pretty much."