Jemima Adams Verling's rugby journey began when she made the transition from primary school to secondary school in Coláiste Mhuire Ballygar, and admittedly 'wasn't much into sport' when she first started.
It helped that her brother Josh was already playing at Creggs RFC, located on the Galway-Roscommon border, and with the support of her parents Richard and Nikki, and her coaches and team-mates, her love for rugby blossomed.
She helped Creggs to make a real splash in Connacht underage competitions, playing alongside the likes of Róisín Maher and Sarah Purcell, and credits Dave Purcell, the club's head of girls rugby and her coach from Under-14 up to Under-18 level, as a huge influence.
The talented back rower won two Connacht Under-18 league titles with Creggs, and a famous league and cup double in 2025, the same season that she was honoured as the Connacht Women's Club Player of the Year.
The Women's National Talent Squad (WNTS), established by the IRFU in 2022, has been a real gamechanger in terms of identifying, developing, and supporting players, aged 16 to 23, that have the potential to be selected for national squads.
Former Ireland international Katie Fitzhenry, the IRFU's Women's National NTS and Talent Identification Manager, has been the driving force behind the WNTS programme, and players such as Aoife Dalton, Dannah O'Brien, and Sophie Barrett were part of its first intake.
With strategic direction provided by Gillian McDarby, the IRFU Head of Women's Performance and Pathways, the Union recently confirmed the list of centrally-contracted players for the 2026/27 season, and Adams Verling and Barrett are both part of the forwards group.
Just a few short years ago there was no WNTS, Under-18 Six Nations Festival, centralised IRFU contracts for the Women's High Performance Programme, or Celtic Challenge or Under-21 Women's Six Nations Series, but Adams Verling's timing has been perfect to utilise the acceleration of these structured environments as a springboard to senior international rugby.
She has developed her game further under coaches like Craig Hansberry, who oversaw Connacht's Under-18 Interprovincial Championship win in 2024 and is now the province's senior Women's head coach, Matt Gill, Larissa Muldoon, Niamh Briggs, and Denis Fogarty.
The Roscommon native played for the Ireland Under-18s in 2024 alongside club-mates Purcell and Síofra Hession, and Under-20 international honours followed last year just before she turned 19.
In her first season as a player contracted to the Women's High Performance Programme, she starred at number 8 when the Ireland U-21s completed a hat-trick of victories in the inaugural U-21 Six Nations Series, just off the back of a successful second Celtic Challenge campaign with the Clovers.
It led her to a deserved first call-up to Scott Bemand's Ireland squad for this autumn international window, and he had no hesitation in giving her a starting debut at blindside flanker against the USA.
Reflecting on Adams Verling's first experience of Test rugby, Bemand said: "Jemima obviously doesn't want a result like that on her first cap, but in terms of her story, what this is, this is the start of a long piece for her. I hope she goes on and gets many more caps."
What is so encouraging for Women's and girls' rugby in the west is that the 20-year-old is just the latest Connacht youngster to make the breakthrough as a senior international.
Her current roommate in Ireland camp and good friend, Ailish Quinn, and Ivana Kiripati, another Creggs forward, were both capped by Bemand against Scotland before last year's Rugby World Cup.
When you look at Briggs' impressive Ireland U-21 group from last season, Connacht were represented by Adams Verling, Ella Burns, Poppy Garvey, Maher, who has since signed with Gloucester-Hartpury, Quinn, Emily Foley, and Hession.
In addition, there was strong Connacht representation in this year's Ireland U-18 Women's squad, with a total of nine players involved, including recent Connacht senior debutants Uillin Eilian and Aoife Heaney.
Muldoon, the former Grand Slam-winning scrum half, has had some crucial input in developing elite young talent, initially as Connacht's representative in the WNTS pathway staff, and now as their Women's Rugby Lead, tasked with making their provincial pathway the best it can be.
The newly-capped Adams Verling is a shining example of that system, and as a proud product of Creggs, she knows how much it means to those in the small village club, which is thriving in terms of facilities and playing numbers, to see her play for the national team.
Commenting on the support she felt in the build-up to her debut, she said: "It's just insane. Like, even from the last couple of weeks, getting my first cap, it just shows how much love is in the rugby community.
"All the people from my home club (Creggs) and even the club I'm with now, Galwegians, they're just all such amazing people that have made feel so good the last couple of weeks. The pride and community that is in rugby, it's amazing."
There will hopefully be plenty more Adams Verlings coming through the WNTS route, with a total of 64 players currently working with the Provincial Talent Coaches, and engaging with high-performance Women's rugby at an earlier stage of the talent pipeline.
Publication of the Year One Snapshot of the Women's Rugby Strategy, which was launched in July last year by Lynne Cantwell, the IRFU's Head of Women's Strategy, brought further good news with numbers on the rise across all levels of the game.
Part of the Strategy's focus for 2026 to 2028 will be accelerating the provincial pathway build for women and girls aged between 16 and 23, recruiting, developing, and retaining more female coaches and referees, and working towards having 40% of clubs with full female pathways from mini rugby to adult level.
"I've been lucky enough to be one of the first people that's gone the whole way through the pathway," explained Adams Verling.
"I was lucky enough to have the underage Connacht pathway and then I was involved in the NTS programme and then Clovers (in the Celtic Challenge).
"They've been really good for making that pathway, like I've been so fortunate to have experienced playing with a couple of those (Ireland) girls before and learning so much off them, so the pathway is definitely huge and it's making such a difference to girls coming through."
