Erin King, the 2024 World Rugby Women's 15s Breakthrough Player of the Year, will captain Ireland for the 2026 Guinness Women's Six Nations Championship ©Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
It is now just under six weeks until the start of the Guinness Women’s Six Nations – a campaign that Ireland will bookend with a Tickenham date with England in front of a Championship record crowd, and a landmark Aviva Stadium clash with Scotland.
There is huge excitement surrounding the Scotland fixture on Sunday, May 17 (kick-off 2.30pm), which will be the first standalone Women’s Six Nations match to be held at the home of Irish Rugby, marking another major milestone for the Ireland Women’s squad.
Click here to buy tickets for Ireland v Scotland at the Aviva Stadium. Supporters are able to purchase up to 50 tickets for the game online, while larger groups can email tickets@irishrugby.ie to secure their seats.
The attendance figure that day at the Aviva is also set to enter the record books, with over 14,000 tickets already sold for the historic occasion when Ireland will aim to avenge last year’s 26-19 defeat to Scotland.
2025 was another year to remember for Scott Bemand’s side, who drew a new Irish record attendance of 7,754 when they played England at Cork’s Virgin Media Park, before marking Ireland’s return to the Women’s Rugby World Cup stage by going agonisingly close to reaching the last-four.
An extended 37-player Ireland squad kicked off preparations for the Six Nations last month, reconnecting as a group at a three-day training camp at the IRFU High Performance Centre. Fit-again back rower Erin King has since been revealed as the new captain, and cannot wait to get going.
Summing up the mood of the players and her own anticipation of her first time captaining Ireland, King said: “We’re all raring to go, really excited. I think we just want the first game to be next week. We’ve just seen that they’ve sold like 60,000 tickets for it.
“It’s so exciting, and I think it’s why we do it. The work that went on in the World Cup (in England) and how inspiring that World Cup was is showing. We’re in camp in a couple of weeks’ time, and all our focus is already on that game.
“With a record Six Nations crowd there, it’s going to be a historical game, and also personally for me, definitely a really special day to captain the team. It will be my first time leading the girls out.
“Selling so many tickets shows the growth of Women’s sport and the growth of Women’s rugby. We’ve so many young players coming through, so much talent coming through, and hopefully (we can) put in a performance and show what we can do.”
Having unfortunately both missed the World Cup through injury, King and Dorothy Wall are back to full fitness and finding form at just the right time. After tearing the cartilage in her knee against England last April, a heartbroken King had a long, gruelling road to recovery.
The injury was so serious – almost all of the cartilage was knocked off the back of her kneecap – that she was told she might not play again, and possibly would not even be able to run. Following her operation, she was in a knee brace, locked straight, for 12 weeks.
There was a time of uncertainty given the unique nature of the surgery, which involved nano-fracturing and the use of collagen from a pig. However, the doubts she experienced, especially when she could not ‘get range back in her knee for a long time’, eventually faded away.
It is a testament to King’s athletic ability, mental strength, and her appetite for hard work during her rehab programme than she made a quicker-than-expected recovery, making her comeback ahead of schedule for the Wolfhounds in early January.
The 22-year-old now has seven appearances under her belt, and five tries to boot, as the Wolfhounds chase a third Celtic Challenge title in a row. Being back out on the pitch, playing regularly, has her itching to get the green jersey on again.
As the countdown to the Women’s Six Nations continues, she commented: “The girls did a great job at the World Cup, coming that close to France. We’ve shown that we can compete with the best in the world and that we should be in that top four, I think.
“Obviously, England are World champions, and how exciting that we get the opportunity to go out and face the World champions in the opening round of the Six Nations.
“The last time we faced World champions (at the WXV1 tournament in 2024), the Black Ferns, we beat them. So anything’s possible.
“We took a lot of inspiration from the lads putting in that performance against England at Twickenham. The energy that they came out with is the same probably that we want to come out with. Fair play to them, it was a great performance and hopefully we can replicate some of that.”
The ‘Green Wave’ is only growing stronger in 2026, and along with gracing the Aviva Stadium pitch, Bemand’s charges will play at Connacht’s Dexcom Stadium for the first time – hosting Italy there on Saturday, April 18 – as well as entertaining Wales at Ulster’s home ground, Affidea Stadium, a week before their encounter with Scotland.
As highlighted in World Rugby’s RWC 2025 Impact Report, the 2025 World Cup has changed Women’s rugby forever, with almost half a million tickets sold for the World Cup in England, 92% attendance across the tournament, and 1.1 billion social media impressions.
Ireland were one of the most followed teams during the game’s global showpiece event, the proximity of the host country undoubtedly a factor but also the rise of the girls in green on the international stage, given their stellar performances at WXV1 last season and their climb to fifth in the World Rugby rankings.
30,017 fans attended their much-anticipated Pool C showdown with New Zealand in Brighton, and they also had five-figure crowds for their tournament opener against Spain (13,053), and the gut-wrenching 18-13 quarter-final loss to France (11,618).
Seeing those fans come out in force on home soil will be something to savour this spring, and King is confident that this Ireland team will deliver performances to match the colour and noise generated by those in the stands.
“If you watch any of the games from the World Cup, (you can see) how entertaining Women’s rugby is. Some would argue and say it’s more entertaining than the Men’s game.
“If you’re on the fence about it, I think 100% buy the tickets. It’s going to be a great day out. I can promise you that we have something really special building in our squad, in our camp.
“We will put in performances and produce entertaining games. We just want to inspire the next generation, so if that means we have more young girls at the games, that’s what we do it for.
“So, yeah, please get out, buy the tickets. It’s a historical event in the Aviva Stadium for us against Scotland, and we’ll put in a performance that I think will be worth it to come to,” she added.
Erin King is an ambassador for Sport Ireland’s ‘Women in Sport’ Week, which runs from March 2-8. The campaign calls on the public to bring the #SameEnergy to Women’s sport as they would to Men’s sport, by attending, watching, streaming or celebrating female sport in all its forms.
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