‘Competition For Places Is Driving Us On – O’Brien On Galwegians’ Improvements This Season

Four years ago, Sinéad O’Brien had never played a game of rugby. She had never packed a kitbag for a Saturday afternoon Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Division fixture, never stood on a wing scanning a defensive line, never felt the rhythm of structured chaos that defines the sport.

Her journey from Claremorris to Connacht caps has not followed a traditional arc. There were no underage interpros, no early identification as a prospect.

There was Gaelic football with her local club, the absence of a rugby team at her age group, and then, years later a message sent on social media asking for a chance.

Now she stands as a key part of a Galwegians side chasing something tangible. With five games remaining in the Energia All-Ireland League season, ‘Wegians have 25 points still to fight for. They trail fourth placed Old Belvedere by 18 points. It is a gap that demands belief as much as consistency.

They have already shown they can beat Belvo. They have already shown they can put together a five-game unbeaten run, as they did at the start of this campaign.

What they must now show is resilience, the capacity to rediscover their best form after a home defeat to UL Bohemian last weekend. For Galwegians, the improvements on last season are there, but that next step is one sill there for the taking.

“For us our main aim with the whole season was just that every performance was better than the last”, O’Brien explains.

“I think we have been doing that now obviously when we came up against the top four it was a lot harder. You have some people injured, we had some missing with Celtic Challenge but it’s just to get across those extra fine margins and details for everyone.

“But we’re just aiming for our points now and hoping that this next block of games we can really target.”

There is no panic in her assessment, no dramatic recalibration of ambition. Instead there is process, incremental improvement, marginal gains, an understanding that the leap from mid-table to the summit is rarely linear. Galwegians are not trying to transform overnight. They are trying to climb.

Last season they finished in sixth position, a team that had plenty of selection headaches, 31 points was the gap to fourth spot in the end. That realism has been hard-earned. Last season, numbers were tight and depth was thinner. This year feels different. There is competition in every position, pressure that sharpens rather than suffocates.

“I think this year as well we found we finally have a lot more competition for places on the team as well, whereas last year we kind of would have struggled a bit more numbers wise so you weren’t having to compete against as many people for your starting position or your position on the team, whereas this year we do have a lot more squad depth so you are trying to compete with each other obviously to better each other as well but to fight for a place on the team to make sure that you’re helping the team get to a better place.”

That competition has been fuelled in part by a wave of younger players entering the squad. Sophie Cullen at 19 has featured in all 13 games this season, Jemma Lees and Megan Connolly have formed a youthful out-half partnership at 20 years old, as have Bebhinn Gleeson and Sarah McCormick in the back-row in recent weeks.

The likes of Grainne Moran at 19 and Siofra Hession at 18, who is balancing her mocks alongside Celtic Challenge commitments with the Clovers and a debut season in the Energia All-Ireland League, have also added depth to their squad. Ella Burns turned 20 this week and has been another of their cohort playing with the Clovers.

And plenty more teenagers and early twenty-somethings who have known rugby structures from underage level, who arrive with provincial experience already embedded in their muscle memory have also added to their ranks this season, which O’Brien admits have been playing longer than she has.

“Those younger girls they’re all nearly playing from when they’re quite young, like most of them played underage rugby, played underage Connacht or underage Leinster whichever province that they’re with.

They have so much knowledge of the game for girls that are so young, it is great that they’ve come in, they’re able to just gel and that they can share their knowledge as well as learn from others too. Some of those girls are playing rugby way longer than me and I’m nearly six and seven years older than them.”

There is a quiet irony in that. O’Brien, at 26, is considered one of the older heads in the group. Yet in rugby years, she is still relatively new. Her journey did not begin in an academy. It began with a message sent on Instagram.

“I only actually moved to Galway and joined Galwegians in February-March of 2022 so I had never played rugby before. I was 22 years old just moved to Galway and I literally texted the girls on Instagram just saying I wanted to try something new could I come along to their training session or was it too late and it was actually Lisa Anglim that got back in touch with me.

She said it’s not too late we’d love to have you there’s only two games left of the season for our juniors, you’ll have missed our first team’s block of games to be registered but come up on Tuesday and we’ll get you registered and see can we get you a game before the season ends.”

There is something wonderfully unpolished about that beginning. No grand announcement. No carefully plotted pathway. Just curiosity and courage. Galway was new. Rugby was new. The only certainty was that she wanted to try it out.

The speed with which things unfolded still feels surreal. After just two weeks of training, she was named in the junior squad for a semi-final.

“I think I had done two weeks of training or so and then they had their semi-final, thought I was going to be on the bench for that because when you’ve two squads once you’ve your five starts you can’t play down in the level, so obviously that junior team was getting smaller and smaller by the amount of girls going up to AIL that they had a place on the bench for me.

And I arrived at the game and they were like Cammy’s (Camille Lasslle) injured so you’re actually starting. And I was like I’ve only joined this team two weeks ago, how am I starting on the wing. I was like I haven’t a clue what I’m doing, but it was great, I was the first to get over for a try in that match and we won like I think 20-0.

We had a final two weeks after that again and I ended up getting player of the match, so I was like this is definitely a sport I think it just came to me quickly enough, so then I only started playing AIL then for that 2022-23 season, after that kept going with it and then that’s brought me up to now.”

Some athletes search for years to find their sport. For O’Brien, while she had a GAA background and still plays the sport, it felt almost immediate that rugby was something different. Instinct met opportunity and something clicked. The winger’s role, space, speed, decisiveness, suited her. The physicality did not deter her. It excited her.

But sport rarely moves in straight lines. Just as momentum built, injury intervened.

“I suppose for the two previous seasons to this year I kind of got really unlucky with injury, I was one of those players that was in and out of the team for the last two years I kind of got six breaks over a two-year period. I was in and out of rehab the whole time doing my work to try get back to the girls but it’s a physical sport I just got unlucky with it.”

Six breaks in two years. The phrase alone carries weight. For a player still new to the game, still carving out confidence and positional understanding, repeated interruptions can fracture more than bone. They can erode belief. They can be isolated. Yet if rugby was new, the community around it was not long in making itself felt.

“It was literally so seamless the transition. I had got to the training and the girls welcomed me, they were doing some team stuff one of the days and Lisa again was very good she kind of went over some more detail with me on the side. I think it was only like three or four weeks after knowing the girls they said that they were booking a team holiday to come along, and I was like sure I don’t know anyone I wouldn’t even have anyone to stay with and they’re like oh no we’ll room you with someone.

And within the first month of knowing them I was already booked to go on a team holiday with them all, they’re just so welcoming. I think I went on holidays with them every year since with that group of girls, it’s very close and tight-knit and we’re starting to get more variety in ages now.

I’m nearly considered one of the old ones and I’m only 26 years old now but we have a lot of like 19 and 20 year olds that are all coming in and they’re all gone really close, and they get on with the older ones so it’s good to have a such big community sense to the team.”

That sense of belonging matters when rehab rooms replace matchdays. It matters when summers become battlegrounds of hope and setback. Her brush with provincial rugby with Connacht has been marked by both.

“The summer of 2023 there was this emerging talent programme where it was just like a training squad and I was training with them and we used to train just before the Connacht team.

It was actually Lyndon Jones that called me over when he was the head coach and he just asked would I come along to training and I ended up breaking my hand then leading up to the Interpros.

I knew I was wiped out not even in for a chance and then the next year again I went back, I think it was our second training session into Connacht and I broke my collarbone in three places.

It was completely shattered and I had to go for surgery so I was gone out again for another four months, so I missed that. Then this year I was like no, I need to get through a summer without a break and just just prove that I was able to do it and get my caps and show what all the hard work has gotten me.”

The collarbone break, would have tested anyone’s resolve. Surgery. Months out. Another missed opportunity. But persistence can be as defining as pace.

This summer, she got through it. She earned her Connacht caps against Munster and Leinster. She validated the hours in rehab rooms and lonely conditioning sessions. For a player who once worried she did not even understand the basics of the game, pulling on provincial colours represented more than selection. It was confirmation that all of the hours playing a new sport and the injuries that hindered her chances, were worth it in the end.

That belief now feeds directly back into Galwegians’ ambitions. As they prepare to travel to Ennis this Saturday for a 12pm kick-off, focus sharpens again, Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Division points at stake.

Ennis will not offer sympathy. Nor will the table. An 18 point deficit with five games remaining demands near-perfection and perhaps a stumble elsewhere. But Wegians have already authored part of their own proof. They defeated Old Belvedere earlier in the campaign. They opened the season with five consecutive unbeaten performances, signalling that this was not the same side that finished sixth last year.

Galwegians are not chasing fantasy. They are chasing evidence, evidence that their standards have risen, that their depth matters, that their younger cohort can blend seamlessly with those who found the sport later. They are chasing a top four place that once might have seemed distant but now feels attainable.

With five games left, nothing is guaranteed. But belief, once earned, is difficult to shake. And somewhere in Ennis this weekend, on a wide touchline with space in front of her, a player who only picked up the sport four years ago will once again trust instinct, pace and possibility, carrying not just the ball, but the quiet proof that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is simply begin.

“We definitely want to lift it now from here on out”, O’Brien says.

“We know what we’re capable of and we know what we’ve done at the start of the season. Now we just need to replicate that and just show that we can play rugby and that we are deserving to be up towards the top and definitely in a higher position than last year.

I don’t think anyone would say that you’re going to go from kind of mid to lower table to be in number one for the entire year and staying there. So we were aiming just to be better than last year so it was just to make sure that we get higher and we stay higher.

Where that leads us, if it’s going to lead us to the top four and hopefully get up there, we do have a bit of work to do in those next few games to be able to get there but we’re not putting it out of our sights to try to achieve it anyways.

We’re expecting Ennis to bring it to us and we were expecting that in the first half of the season as well. We don’t underestimate what they’re capable of at all, we know that they’re very good, they’re very clinical players too, we know that we have to be on our game and sharp with all our detail to be able to get a win over them again. It is something we’re aiming for and something we know we’re capable of.”

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