Moore Wants Blackrock To Come Out ‘Firing Harder’ Against Bohs

A lot has changed at Stradbrook since Blackrock College were crowned Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Division champions in December 2022. They are in the title hunt again this season, taking on last year’s winners, UL Bohemian, in the second of Sunday’s semi-finals.

With quite a fresh-faced team and just a handful of names from that title-winning side set to feature this weekend, Blackrock are hungry, rebuilt, and ready for the challenge.

Aoife Moore is one of the few constants in the Blackrock squad. The 29-year-old prop is part of a core group that has carried the flame through a period of transition at the club, setting up this play-off shot at UL Bohs at Annacotty on Sunday (kick-off 2.30pm – live on irishrugby+).

“It’s a funny one, thinking back to 2022,” Moore reflects. “Because in some ways, it seems like it was years and years ago, and in other ways, it feels like it was last week.

“So it is definitely a strange one, but it’s very exciting. We’ve done a lot over the last two seasons, and we’ve really overcome big changes and stuff with our squad to make sure that we were in this position by now.”

Since their last final appearance just over two-and-a-quarter years ago, Blackrock have seen the departure of several key players, retirements, and coaching changes. Like the other semi-finalists, Celtic Challenge and international commitments has meant a number of their leading lights have been unavailable.

Last season was one of growing pains. A fourth place finish, but still very much a team finding its footing. Roll on to the current campaign, Andy Adams’ first as their head coach, and Blackrock’s younger players have matured to help the group develop into a more cohesive and confident unit.

The Dubliners finished third in the regular season and are now looking to avenge a recent 19-7 defeat to Bohs at the same venue. For Moore and her team-mates the focus has not been on revenge, but on putting out their best performance yet.

“Pressure wise, I think looking at Sunday, I suppose we’re going in as the underdog,” she told IrishRugby.ie. “Anything could happen in these knockout matches. At the end of the day, we haven’t beaten UL Bohs since the last semi-final we were in (in 2022).

“So it’s all to play for, for us. I think more excitement than pressure, and I feel like we have enough experience scattered throughout our squad that we’ll know how to play this type of a game and get through and put the best foot forward.

“The last round of the league against Bohs was a slogfest, to say the least. The weather wasn’t ideal. Conditions weren’t great, and it was always just going to be that kind of a day of rugby.

“We let them in early on with two soft tries, I think from our perspective. I just think we need to come out of the blocks firing a bit harder this weekend.”

Moore added: “We’ve done our homework over the last two weeks, but we have very much been kind of looking inward, and looking at ourselves and seeing how we can improve our performance.

“So at the end of the day, the only thing we can really control is ourselves. So that’s what we’ve looked to do in this last training block, going into this weekend.

“I think if we can come out just a little bit more switched on, and just keep our heads screwed on and more focused for definitely the first half anyway.

“Take their first two tries they scored out of it, and then it’s a tight game. It’s just small errors on our part. It’s just a bit more of a mental focus, to tick off the first box anyway, and then going forward.”

The versatile Leinster forward has had quite the journey since first playing with Carrick-on-Suir RFC. She then joined Highfield, the most local All-Ireland League team at the time. She studied and did homework in the car while her dad drove her to training two nights a week.

After moving to Dublin for college, she became a key player and captain of St. Mary’s College before helping Blackrock to win their first All-Ireland League title since 2008. Stradbrook is a place that is dear to her heart, and where she has met a lot of her best friends.

Notably, only five players from the 2022 semi-final win over UL were involved in that round 18 clash from two weeks ago – Moore, fit-again flanker Maeve Óg O’Leary, captain Hannah O’Connor, Ella Durkan, and Ava Fannin.

Among the newer cohort are in-form winger Maggie Boylan (pictured above), who has turned heads all season while amassing a staggering 22 tries, and 20-year-old centre Cara Martin has also stepped up impressively in only her second senior campaign.

Australian duo Casey Jackson and Tess Proos have added plenty to the Blackrock back-line, and Lisa Mullen, who missed last month’s encounter with Bohs, has shown composure and class in the number 10 jersey.

While few have felt that experience of making a semi-final or indeed a final before, Moore would love to see the younger members of the ‘Rock squad rewarded for their efforts across the year.

“After 2022, 2023, we lost a huge core group of our players through retirement, some then as well just from international duty (in) that they’re not available to play with us as they were then.

“There were a lot of big boots to fill, and I think the younger girls have come in and done really well to fill those positions. We had a loss of some of our core group of our players in very key positions, and they were hard boots to fill.

“So last year was tough in that sense. Like any young team, there’s teething issues, and we were lucky to have such an influx of young players come into us last year.

“I think the last year, we got a good foundation of where we were at and where we kind of wanted to get too, and I think that has allowed us to get to a point where we’re playing a brand of rugby that we want to play.

“We’ve put in a lot of work over this season and last season, but especially the last few months, to get to that point. It’s exciting going forward and looking at this weekend, I think I’m excited to show how much we’ve improved over the last few seasons.

Our team has changed a lot since the last time that we were in this position. We’ve bonded well on the pitch, and there’s not a lot of us who got to experience that the last time, and got to experience being in a final and how it felt to be on both sides of that coin.

“The first final we were in with the loss (to Railway Union in February 2022), and then we were lucky enough to win it. There’s not many of us left within the squad who got to experience that.

“Obviously for the older crew, we want to be there again. We want to go through (to the final), we want to feel all that all over again because it was absolutely amazing.

“But I think even more so for that, we want the younger ones to experience it as well and to feel what it’s like to be on that side of the table.”

Philip ‘Goose’ Doyle, a man synonymous with Women’s rugby at Blackrock and some of the Ireland Women’s greatest days on the international stage, is ‘Rock’s director of rugby, working alongside Adams, whose coaching group also includes former Ireland international Judy Bobbett.

Sunday’s eagerly-awaited showdown at Annacotty pits the title holders against the 2022/23 champions. Adams’ charges know the slate has been wiped clean after bookending the regular seasons with losses to Bohs, including a 31-15 reversal at home on the opening day back in September.

Bracing for a big battle by the Mulcair river, Moore would love to reach another league final with Blackrock, especially with it being held for the second year running as part of a Men’s and Women’s finals double header at the Aviva Stadium, on Sunday, April 27.

“It would mean a lot to the club for us to be back in the final. This year we’ve got continuous support from the club on a whole, including the lads team, and we’re really lucky in that sense, that we have such backing from the club.

“UL Bohs are a quality side, and they are of course defending their title. I mean they’ve been storming their way in the AIL for as long as I can remember.

“It’s going be a tight game, but at the end of the day, it’s knockout rugby, and anything can happen. In these stages of the season, you never know what could happen at this time of the year.

“As much of a quality side Bohs are, I think we have a lot of quality in our squad as well, so I think it’s going be a really exciting game.

“From even a personal perspective with regards to the Aviva Stadium, you watch rugby for years, and so many big games are played in the Aviva. So to get the opportunity to play there myself would be enormous.

“I’d say it’s the same for the girls. We’re all in the same boat. We kind of set our stall out earlier in pre-season, what we wanted, and the Aviva was our goal.

“Getting to play there would be absolutely amazing. I mean they’re the kind of days that you wish for, and they’re the kind of days you put in all the hard work for, with your team,” she concluded.

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