From Scrums To Scrubs – Corri Fallon Calls Time On International Career

When the final whistle blew on Ireland’s World Cup campaign in England, Eimear Corri-Fallon stood in a sea of green. Around her, families waved flags, friends cheered from the stands, and young girls reached over the railings for one more photo and one more autograph with their heroes.

Just a few months later, she sat down to make a big decision. It wasn’t a moment of certainty, it was one of quiet courage. The kind that doesn’t roar, but whispers, It’s time. After 15 years of playing rugby, rising through every level to represent her country at a World Cup, she has chosen to step away from international rugby to focus on a different calling, her career in medicine.

At 27, she was standing at the peak of her rugby career, a capped international who had fought her way back from injury to help Ireland re-establish themselves among the world’s elite. Her mind had been quietly wrestling with another calling, the one that took her from the rugby pitch to the hospital ward, and from the scrums to the scrubs.

A doctor by profession, Corri-Fallon had reached the point where the balance between her two passions could no longer hold.

“It hasn’t been an easy decision at all,” she admits. “I’ve been fortunate enough to be playing rugby for 15 years and have achieved quite big goals for me in the last number of years. In some aspects of it, I’m probably at the most successful end of my career. Me off the pitch is Eimear the doctor, and it hasn’t been easy balancing the two.

“I’ve always kind of had that drive or stubbornness, I call it, that I really wanted to do the two and really wanted to give the two my best shot. But it’s just where I am in my career now. I graduated in 2024. I’d done my year’s mandatory internship and I’d kind of started the pathway to consultancy on a formal training programme to get there. But just the demands of medicine don’t allow me to give rugby my 100%. And I think I’m not the type of person nor athlete that wants to be or wants to feel like I’m not able to give it my 100%.”

Corri-Fallon’s journey has always been about balance, a word that doesn’t quite capture the chaos of what she managed to achieve. Balancing is perhaps too light a word. What she managed, over the past few years, bordered on the superhuman.

Graduating in 2024, Corri-Fallon began her mandatory internship while continuing to train, travel, and compete at international level. Her life became a delicate choreography of long days and longer nights. It was not sustainable, but she made it work through sheer willpower, building from as she put it best, her stubbornness.

“When I was working and playing rugby, it was just very, very, very long days. And I did it because maybe stubbornness, but you know, I absolutely wanted to do the two and I wanted to give the two my best shot.

“Getting up at about 6:30, leaving at 7 to be at work for 7:30-7:45. I’d be working 8 until 6 if I was lucky. We don’t technically have a fixed time in healthcare. It’s just when your patients are all stable enough and when all the jobs for the day have been done that you get to get away.

“And so I would have then gone from straight from work, to having my dinner in work to going straight to training and either getting my gym work at training or then having to get up the next morning if I’d missed it because work had gone over before all of that. It was just long days and not getting home then until maybe 10-10:30, and then doing it all again the next.

“And then Sunday would be a food shop and prep all the meals, all the lunches, all the dinners for the week because I wouldn’t really get to have as much of a recovery time or a downtime as everyone else would and I’d be on my feet a lot.

“I had to be really quite strict nutrition-wise to make sure that I was hitting all my targets and fuelling myself up for the session. I did it because I wanted to do it.

“For me, I’m very happy with what I’ve achieved and I’m delighted to have been involved with the Irish group. And I just feel like the best thing for me going forward career-wise and the group going forward and me as a player is for me to kind of end things on my own terms and give medicine my 100%.”

In that honesty lies her character, a refusal to do things by half-measure, a quiet pride in giving everything she has to both jersey and profession. It’s also what makes her decision so poignant. Corri-Fallon is walking away from an International career, not because she has fallen out of love with the game, but because she loves it too much to give it less than her all.

It is a side of the game that many others do not see. In an era where athletes are often judged by their career longevity and honours, there’s a quiet bravery in looking to the future and life when that final whistle sounds on a playing career. At 27, many would think an athlete is at their peak, ready to keep pushing for more years.

“All of those things are very valid points and they’re points that I’ve kind of toyed over in my head as well.” She explains.

“Where we got to in this World Cup, I know for a fact from being involved with the group, the group wanted to go further and they absolutely are aiming to go further four years down the line in Australia. It’s the way the game is going and the development this group has done in the last couple of years that really does require 100% commitment. You really need to focus on everything, all the small margins, recovery, on-pitch, off-pitch analysis and all that sort of stuff.

“I had taken time out, I had committed to that group and I’m delighted to have been involved in the World Cup this year. But I just think going forward, I probably wouldn’t have been able to balance the two. And just for me, I went back to medicine.

“I think one thing that’s quite big for me as well, sport and role models for me, the likes of Simone Biles and even Garry Ringrose when he pulled out of the British and Irish Lions tour, it’s not easy to make decisions like this.

“But I think like the impact that those players have as role models, I’ve had lots of younger athletes ask me kind of about balancing academics with sports or balancing nursing with sports or have even expressed an interest in the healthcare profession.

“And I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve been able to achieve what I have and hopefully showcase to younger girls and give them a bit of an inspiration to go, I don’t have to give up sports for my leaving cert or for college or whatever.

I think it’s important that people see people having other ambitions outside of sports. I’m kind of retiring at one of the most successful points of my career. I’m relatively young and had everything gone well, may have been putting my hand up for selection in a couple of years time.

“But I’d really like to be able to show people as well, it’s okay to have other interests. It’s okay to now have new dreams and follow those new dreams or new goals. I think it’s not often we see that side of the game. But it’s a hugely important side of the game because it doesn’t last forever, and that’s what I’m heading back into the scrubs.”

While she has made the decision to close one chapter and start another, success to this point has never come without struggle. Over the course of her playing career, she has endured the full carousel of highs and lows, from breakthrough performances in the Energia All-Ireland League to the heartbreak of injury layoffs that would have broken lesser spirits.

For nearly three seasons she missed out action due to two different ankle injuries in her early days, an achilles rupture in September 2024, came at the worst possible time, a World Cup on the horizon. The injury, she thought, had ended her international ambitions. But like much of her career, the story took a different turn.

If there’s a single thread that runs through her story, it’s resilience. Injuries sidelined her more than once, but each time she returned, stronger and more determined. Her comeback for the World Cup, barely a year after her achilles tear, was one of the most inspirational stories in the squad. She’d made it back, played a play, and her return marked a complete circle, 12 months on from when she’d torn her Achilles, she had the Ireland jersey on at the biggest stage, a dream since she first transitioned to the sport.

“The World Cup was amazing,” she says, a smile breaking through the seriousness. “I think anyone that’s involved in sport to a high level, we really do have big dreams and the World Cup has been a dream of mine since I started playing elite rugby back in 2016. It absolutely was a dream come true. Any time you wear the green jersey is amazing. The WXV3 when I got my first caps was so special.

“My first Six Nations playing at home in 2024 in front of family and friends, that was special too. I think wearing the green jersey is always a special moment regardless of the enormity of the occasion. Throughout my career I’ve been quite unfortunate with injuries. I ruptured my achilles last September in the Interpro finals where we did our back-to-back.

“At that stage, the World Cup felt to me like it wasn’t a possibility and I was just very lucky that the rehab process went the way it did and that my body could heal in time and that it could tolerate getting back.

“The last year alone has been almost like a synopsis of my career between injuries and getting back and being quite successful. My World Cup experience was particularly special with the amount of support that we had.

“And the fact that it was in England, we couldn’t really get closer to home if we tried. So it was really special. I had a lot of support over there. A lot of my friends from home, some of them actually that I met through rugby in college came over as well.

“That was incredible to wear the green jersey. I was so proud to have been involved in all of the games over there as well as the two warm-up games as well. I was hugely proud to get that much game time and be involved in every match having been out with my achilles injury, just 12 months prior to that. I think the Japan match or possibly the Spanish match was actually 12 months to the day that I ruptured my achilles. It was a huge full circle moment for me and an absolute dream come true.”

That experience at the World Cup was amplified by the “Green Wave”, the groundswell of support that followed the team throughout the tournament. The players felt it tangibly, she says, and it went beyond cheering crowds. It was about visibility, pride, and proof that Irish women’s rugby had arrived on the world stage.

Players went viral on social media, the team fleece became one of the most sought after clothing items in the world, and back home the next generation were not only watching their heroes, they were trying to be like them.

Girls were looking at the Give It A Try programme, or Get AcT1ve, to get involved in the sport. While the players soaked it all in at the World Cup, the magnitude of what they had done was not felt until they came home.

Seeing the barriers they had broken and how much they had inspired the next generation, Corri-Fallon is hopeful the Green Wave can now extend to different shores across the globe, with more girls coming through these platforms.

“I’ll never forget Brighton that Friday before the New Zealand game, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a green jersey and it was amazing. And I think as well what’s been so special about this World Cup, not only has it broken the barriers or the records for most supporters and spectators and the viewers, through the broadcasting channels.

“The likes of the girls going viral with the TikTok and the fleece, it massively showcased the value of female athletes and the reach that they can get and the engagement with female athletes, particularly female rugby athletes. I personally think across the board, it’s been a hugely, hugely successful World Cup for Irish rugby.

“I know even when we got back, we were getting sent pictures of rugby teams in secondary schools and the increase in numbers and interest in girls that they had playing in their clubs or in their school teams, was phenomenal.

“And my secondary school, their team came out to Brighton to support. The support has just been absolutely amazing. And I think it’s hopefully only going to grow from there. And that’s the whole idea with the Green Wave. It’s this movement that we’re trying to get other people involved in and like a wave bringing it to the shores of other countries. And we absolutely felt that support throughout the whole competition.

“That was a driver for us as well, was putting out good performances to showcase all the work that has gone into it and performances that we can be proud of and that made girls want to support Irish rugby and want to aspire to be involved in it.

“We are up amongst the top eight teams in the world. And that’s the place that we would have longed to have been in a couple of years ago. We can’t underestimate the growth that has happened in quite a short period of time.

“We can see the development in the game from that younger age. And I know even a lot of the girls who are kind of newly into the group, into senior setup, or even in that women’s national talent squad or the U20’s system, like a lot of those girls started from Give It A Try sessions or started playing in their schools.

“So we’re definitely starting to see the players come up through the ranks. All those things take time as well, because if you introduce that at a grassroots level, you have to wait until you’re kind of producing the players coming out of that. But we definitely are seeing that. And the likes of Jane Neil and Alma Atagamen, started in a Give It A Try session. So we definitely are starting to see that.

“And those are really important as well to showcase that the pathway is there, that the pathway works, that you can get there and be those kind of role models or those success stories for girls who may be further down the pathway at the moment.”

For the girl from Portaloise who was dominating the athletics scene, it has been quite the journey to reach the heights of Elite Level Rugby. A rugby story began in her native county, but it was the influence of Alison Miller and Emma Hooban, along with Ireland defeating the Black Ferns in 2014, that saw a change from the track to the pitch.

“Athletics was actually my background. And just from being quite prominent locally in Portlaoise, I had competed in a couple of community games, national competitions and that. And it was actually Alison who happened to be what we call your manager when you’re there, looking after you when you’re residing up at the community games tournament.

“Alison would have been on my radar. And I happened to be in school with Emma, who’s also been an Irish international as well. So I think it was probably a perfect combination of a lot of things. She was actually the one that got me involved. I would have been aware of it through Emma, I would have watched Alison Miller, be a huge inspiration for girls out there.

“That 2014 win over the Black Ferns, it’s kind of that era when rugby would have started getting on my radar. And then it just completely took over. I kind of love the contrast between the isolation or a kind of training on your own as an athlete to being in a team sport where everyone has a different role and you’re dependent upon your teammates or with this common goal. That just hugely appealed to me and kind of ever since 2010, 2011, it’s been all rugby.”

There’s something poetic in ending one chapter, to return to a previous one. At a time when she could have pushed for more caps and more milestones, she’s walking away with peace from the International setup.

And it’s far from calling it a day either. While she leaves the pitch to the hospital ward, and her Ireland chapter closes here, this isn’t the end of Corri-Fallon’s rugby journey. She plans to return to the Blackrock jersey before long, and perhaps even to provincial colours in the years ahead.

She found a permanent home when she joined Blackrock College in 2016 after moving to Dublin for college. It was at Blackrock that she made the transition from winger to second row, a transformation that reflected both her adaptability and her commitment to learning her craft.

Soon enough, she’ll be back on the pitch in the familiar colours Blackrock, smiling through the mud once more. Other commitments and injury woes have seen her not feature for the Stradbrook faithful since late 2023. A team that has been there through the good times and bad, with her love for Blackrock, it’s something you walk away from. It’s something you carry with you, into every ward, every patient, every new day.

Her career to date taught her resilience. Medicine will benefit from it. And someday soon, when she pulls on that Blackrock jersey again, it won’t be about a comeback, it’ll be about coming home.

“It has been a long time since December of 2023. Unfortunate with being away with Celtic Challenge, but then getting that unfortunate injury in the Interpro final last year. I’ve been nursing a few niggles and rehabbing things, but absolutely fully intend to be back in the AIL, back training with the club.

“Definitely not the end, would be available for the likes of an Interprovincial campaign or being in training with the group. It’s absolutely not the end of the road for me from a club or an Interprovincial side of things. It’s just a case of being at a crossroads whereby I need to be able to give 100% to either career or sports to best progress personally in either of them. And for me, it’s just been the career is the pathway I’m going to go down.

“I joined Blackrock in 2016 when I moved up to Dublin for college and played in the AIL at that stage. I think we’re all very aware, the club is where a lot of us started, and for me in particular, not only has Blackrock been there through all my injuries, the majority of those girls in Blackrock have seen me get injured, have seen all the blood, sweat and tears as you’re doing the rehab process week in, week out.

“We’ve all kind of been on that journey together, girls bringing flowers when you’re getting back on the pitch, and stuff like that, we all see the work that goes into anyone that has to come back from an injury. Not only that I actually started in Blackrock and started my career as a winger, and it was in Blackrock that I actually made the transition into the second row.

“I literally did a full position change, I learned my trade genuinely in Blackrock as a club. And I think the club is extra special to everybody. Putting on that jersey is special, and it’s a different sort of bond with those players and a bond that we’ll always have.

“Huge appreciation for the club and the talent that’s there, and for kind of being a constant for a lot of us, and a constant safe space that we go back to when we could be at our lowest point.

“I know they’re doing very well at the minute and I’ve been down to a few of their games and a few of the training sessions and that. I’m definitely still involved there, still regularly communicating with them and fully intend to feature there at some stage, or at least put my hand up for a selection anyway.”