King: Celtic Challenge Is A Great Pathway For Players Coming Through
Wolfhounds back rowr Erin King comes into the all-Irish Celtic Challenge final as the cross-border competition's top try scorer with seven tries in nine matches ©Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
New captain Erin King says the battle for back row places is as competitive as it has ever been in the Ireland squad, even with Edel McMahon and Claire Boles both injured for the upcoming Guinness Women’s Six Nations.
Secure your tickets for Ireland’s historic Aviva Stadium encounter with Scotland
King and Dorothy Wall, who can play at lock or blindside flanker, are both back to full fitness after unfortunately missing last year’s Rugby World Cup through injury. The loose forwards continues to be an area of serious strength for Scott Bemand’s side.
Aoife Wafer, the 2025 Six Nations Player of the Championship, Brittany Hogan, Fiona Tuite, and Grace Moore were the most recent starters in the back row, with Tuite, Wafer, and Hogan the trio that featured against France in last September’s World Cup quarter-final showdown.
Hogan, King, and Wafer were the preferred options at the start of the 2025 Six Nations, while Bemand’s 36-player group for this year’s Championship includes Jane Clohessy and Ailish Quinn, who both made their debuts within the last year, and Jemima Adams Verling and Aoibheann McGrath, two of the fresh-faced success stories of the Celtic Challenge.
The teenage trio of Quinn, Adams Verling, and the versatile McGrath, starting in the second row, will all line out for the Clovers against King’s Wolfhounds in Saturday’s Celtic Challenge final in Edinburgh, just a few days before the players come back into national camp.
“We have our final this weekend, Clovers versus Wolfhounds. It will be funny, we’ll be tackling each other and taking chunks out of each other on Saturday and then we all go into camp on Tuesday and we’ll be best of friends again,” King told Virgin Media Sport.
“Playing with the Wolfhounds, I’ve seen the potential in the young girls coming through. It’s a great pathway that they get to train with the internationals and I think that improves them.
“In the bigger picture, it brings them along, and even having the young girls in camp, like that experience for them and the exposure they’re getting to international players is amazing.
“In the Celtic Challenge, we’ve seen all the young girls coming through, like the likes of Jemima and Ailish. Seeing them named in the squad (for the Six Nations) is brilliant.
“It is a great opportunity for them, you know, to hopefully get their first cap, but also just be in camp and get that experience.”
On the sheer competitiveness of the back row at present, she added: “It is what we want. The competitiveness and training just drives us all on, we’re lifting the standards and pushing each other.
“I think it is great that we have gotten to a point that you don’t know who is going to make the matchday squad because there’s just so many great players. It is a really positive thing.”
The expanded Celtic Challenge season, which is made up of 10 regular-season rounds and the inaugural play-offs, has provided an important platform for King to build back her match sharpness and form after a long and challenging spell on the sidelines due to last April’s devastating knee injury.
Having torn the cartilage in her left knee against England and undergone complex surgery, the 22-year-old put her all into her recovery. Getting back ahead of schedule, she has followed up on January’s 20-minute run-out against the Clovers with eight more starts (all bar one at number 8) – and a competition-high seven tries.
She is relishing the chance to win more silverware with the Wolfhounds in the form of a third straight Celtic Challenge title – she was also involved in the successful 2024/25 campaign under head coach Neill Alcorn – ahead of her debut as Ireland captain against England on Saturday, April 11.
“It’s a brilliant time. If I look back to a couple of months ago, I didn’t know or think I’d be in this position. It’s such an exciting time,” admitted the dual international, who will have Tuite and Ireland Under-21 call-up Aoife Corcoran alongside her in the Wolfhounds back row tomorrow.
“There’s a lot of potential in this (Ireland) group. We’re so lucky that we’re in centralised and we get to train day in, day out with each other at the HPC (the IRFU High Performance Centre) and bring each other along.
“There’s so much potential in Ireland, and if we can just keep growing the game and getting more and more girls playing, that’s the aim. So that’s what we try to do, and that’s why we do it.
“The more girls that play, the bigger the player pool, the better we will be. It is really exciting, and Women’s rugby in Ireland is definitely growing and growing.”
2026 is shaping up to one of the biggest and best years yet for Irish Women’s rugby, kicking off with Ireland playing World champions England at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham in front of what is expected to be a Six Nations record crowd.
The Green Wave will be sweeping through Galway, Belfast, and Dublin during the coming weeks, as Ireland play Italy in their first Women’s Test at Connacht’s Dexcom Stadium since 2008 – as part of an exciting double header with the Under-21s – before a return trip to Affidea Stadium and then their historic date with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium.
It will be a landmark occasion on Sunday, May 17 as the first standalone Women’s international at the home of Irish Rugby takes place. Over 15,000 tickets have already been sold for the final round clash, at the end of which King is hoping they can celebrate further progress on the pitch.
The girls in green won two matches in each of the last two Six Nations tournaments, earning third place finishes both times thanks to bonus points. They have not registered three victories in a single edition since 2020’s Covid-19 disrupted campaign.
That heartbreaking 18-13 quarter-final loss to France last time out represented their best performance against les Bleues for a number of years. The eight defeats to the French prior to that game were all by margins of 12 points or more, with their last win in the fixture coming at Donnybrook in February 2017.
“Closing the gap is the big thing for us. We’ve been professional now for a few years and I do think we are bridging that gap,” commented King, who has scored three tries in seven Test appearances.
“We have more and more players coming through, and you know our standards are getting higher, and the competitiveness in our squad is getting bigger.
“So yeah, definitely try and win our three home games, and reach for more, I don’t see why not. We showed last season that we can win anywhere (in WV1 and the Six Nations). It would be great to do the best we’ve done in the Six Nations for a good while.”