UL Bohs And Clontarf Ready To Defend Energia All-Ireland League Titles

Aviva Stadium will play host to another exciting Energia All-Ireland League Finals day on Sunday with UL Bohemian looking for a third straight title win in the Women’s final while Clontarf look to go back-to-back in the Men’s.

Today we hear from the captains of the reigning champions as they aim to lead their clubs to victory.

UL Bohemian – Chloe Pearse

UL Bohemian go in search of their sixteenth title on Sunday when they face Blackrock in the Energia Women’s All-Ireland League final in Aviva Stadium (k.o. 1:30pm/live on TG4).

The reigning champions, the standard bearers, the ones to beat – you can use many terms to describe the club that goes in search of three-in-a-row at the home of Irish Rugby.

Energia AIL Finals Tickets

The last club to achieve this was Old Belvedere between 2014 and 2016; they beat UL Bohs in two of those finals and their run was brought to an end by the Limerick side in 2017.

Chloe Pearse has been part of the fabric of the club for many seasons and she knows that they always have a target on their back but she also knows that her team can dig deep. Pearse leads from the front, a fact borne out by her nineteen tries this season making her the leading try scorer going into the final.

Asked about the chance of three-in-a-row Pearse said,

“It’s huge. I was looking at the trophy a minute ago and it’s not been done very often, it’s a difficult thing to do. There’s some great clubs in this league and some great players who will be trying to stop us on Sunday. We’ve been the hunted this season but we’ll come out here on Sunday and hopefully try to achieve what we set out to do.”

“It is hard to know. We always back ourselves but you come to a final…you even saw here last year we were a play away from losing but we had that belief in ourselves and that’s definitely something we want to have again this year.”

Clontarf – Dylan Donnellan

Dylan Donellan is another who leads from the front. He may joke that it is easy to ‘flop over the line’ from behind a strong maul but he’s done that and more eighteen times this season to make him the Division’s top try scorer.

On Sunday he will lead Clontarf as they go in search of back-to-back titles, a feat that hasn’t been achieved since Shannon’s three-in-a-row between 2004 and 2006.

St. Mary’s College, the team that topped the league, stand in their way and Donellan knows how difficult they will be, “A new challenge this year, a new opposition. They’ve been fantastic since they came up, even last season I know they didn’t get the whole way but they’ve been an absolute force.”