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♪ SONG: The Cranberries - "Zombie" ♪

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Not one clue,

never thought it was historical,

didn't think we were pioneering,

never dreamed we were leaving a legacy of any kind.

Scrum half at the Coleraine team,

would you like to give us a few words?

How do you about this match?

I'm scared.

I can't do my laces up.

Women's rugby wasn't started by the Irish Rugby Football League.

Women's Gaelic football wasn't started by the GAA.

Womens soccer wasn't started by the FAI.

These were male organisations.

Tight, tight, tight.

(Grunting)

You think women should be at home? I do indeed.

And men go out and do the work. Exactly.

In the kitchen, in the kitchen. It's the way of the world.

it's been the way of the world for years.

Why should it change now?

to be honest with the IRFU.

Maybe at the time, they probably prefer we didn't exist.

That women didn't play rugby.

So much of it is meeting people

and getting to know people and making friends.

But you can do that playing hockey, which is much more a women's game.

Isn't it? (Laughter)

Let's be honest.

The women playing rugby were the normal ones.

We were actually doing something really normal,

but we were in a very abnormal society

which didn't want us to do it. I mean, that wasn't normal.

♪ (Bagpipe music) ♪

Why did we set up Scotland team?

I mean, why on earth not?

I mean, think about the question. It's ridiculous.

♪ ♪

It was a pipe dream, and people did say, No, no way.

It's not going to happen.

They didn't want us to do it.

We changed it.

Women's rugby in Blackrock started as a bit of a laugh,

we played on the Saturday.

The conversation was having in the bar on the Saturday after the match.

And then Philip Doyle's girlfriend at the time, Nicola,

she decided to announce over on the PA that there was going to be

a training session here in Stradbrook at 11

on the following morning, Sunday morning.

So a couple of phone calls were made between the girls,

and we had about 10 or 12 girls arrived on the Sunday.

We got a couple of balls, we got a couple of bags,

just some simple drills, and it was really good fun.

Alain, a bit of a difference between

captaining the senior side here in Blackrock

and the ladies' team?

Well, there's a little bit of a difference,

but there really isn't a hell of a lot.

My involvement with the team here would be just to help out

at the weekends and coaching with two or three other guys.

They just thought it would be a couple of training sessions.

Ah, yeah, tried that, did that, and then everything was fine.

Why rugby, Nicola?

Why not another sport?

Well, I do play another sport. I play hockey as well.

But why not?

I think that we've been coming down as part of...

Okay, our husbands or boyfriends have been playing

down here for years. And why not?

I mean, other people play hockey.

I mean, men play hockey. Why not?

And as I say, we didn't know how it was going to go.

I think the girls love it.

If you're not sitting on that couch, you can play rugby.

Just give it a go, give it a go.

And so many of them, we got down just to give it a go,

and they were completely hooked.

Never thought it would ever take off.

We had a few only for the first couple of training sessions,

and then it mushroomed into 27, 28.

And we're hoping to get two teams next year.

The line-out, the scrums, back play, it's similar in its own way.

So there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between what goes

on with ourselves and what the girls are going through.

and it was so interesting.

Every training session, there was something new.

Obviously, we hadn't a clue because we'd never played rugby before.

The girls are only at this now since just after Christmas.

And it takes its toll at the beginning.

It's a lot of bangs and bruises,

not that they haven't been used to been getting every day of the week,

whereas we've been doing it since we've been in school.

So it's a situation where gradually,

as the weeks go by, after the games,

they're not as sore after a match as now, today,

as they would have been after the first time they played a match.

They could still go out and maybe go for a bit of a run around,

but after the very first match,

they came in and they were nearly exhausted.

If you don't give it your full effort,

you're going to get injured.

I think that's what most people have been amazed by,

is that I think people thought we were going to be

messing around out there

and not doing the stuff,

but it's been very bone-crashing stuff, must be.

We were lucky, in our own home grounds, in the university,

because they had the female and male changing rooms

because we shared it with the other sports,

the hockey and the other sports on that.

But it's when we went to other clubs,

then you realised that there was only men's changing rooms,

and even sometimes you were lucky if you got in and you had to...

The men always came first.

How did you find that in Blackrock?

I didn't go in with any preconceived ideas

we were going to change anything.

All I wanted to do was,

Look, we just wanted to have the team there

and make as little trouble for ourselves as possible,

if you get me?

There were people who were very much in favour of us playing rugby,

but there were people who weren't very favourable either.

♪ ♪

I got taken along to a women's international in,

I think it was in Newport, in Wales.

It was England, well, Wales, England.

And I watched this game and I just thought, That is fantastic.

I just had never seen women playing rugby before, and I was really,

really taken by it.

And I needed to find a rugby club,

and there wasn't any that I could join.

So I just wrote to all the clubs in Edinburgh

and asked if anybody wanted to coach women.

And one came back, and it was a Liberton,

and I put an advert in the paper and got players together,

and then we just started the club.

We were a bit of a nuisance wanting to use the facilities,

wanting to play rugby.

It wasn't really for women.

So at Liberton, our first club team,

we didn't have any strips, did we?

So we said, well, you can use the under-18 strips,

but they are dirty.

You can have them on a Sunday when the boys have used them,

as long as you bring them back on Monday clean.

Okay, we'll do that.

One member memory for us here was

we could use the training facilities,

but not the floodlights.

So we were told, Well, the coats,

the under-18 men are training.

The women are happy if you want to come and use the bit to the side.

That was the behaviour that the men were treating us at that time.

And we were ultimately saying, Thanks very much.

Much appreciated. Thank you.

I wanted to do something

and thought, Yeah, we'll just go and give it a go.

And literally the first night, that was me hooked.

I loved it.

It was my life, really.

It was just that, student and doing rugby.

Then I went and played for Waterloo.

That was great. ♪ (Soft piano music) ♪

And then I got on the regional team very quickly.

So I was playing for the north region.

I came home and I was doing preseason training.

And Cooke hadn't started.

And I trained with Cooke men.

So it turned up, I remember being in the car park

and literally it's quaking in my boots thinking,

What am I doing?

Is this insane?

I was very aware of their egos.

And so the first session, partly to do with my fitness,

but partly because I didn't want to put anybody's nose out of joint,

I just stayed at the back.

Then my confidence grew.

Over the next few weeks,

I did actually probably take great pleasure

in going past them over the next few weeks,

I suppose proving to those who were thinking,

Well, she just shouldn't be here.

I definitely would look back at that as a positive experience

because since then,

I've bumped into some of the guys that I did actually train with,

and some of them say, Hi,

and, How are you doing?

And all those things.

So that's a really lovely thing.

There's a lot of respect there and kindness.

I was working in Dublin,

and on occasion,

I'd go down to this little news agent in Blackrock Village.

The woman working in the shop was having a chat with another woman,

and they were chatting away.

My daughter, she's really stiff and sore after the rugby.

And I thought, she must have made a mistake.

It has to be her son she's talking about.

And I asked, I said, did you mean your son or your daughter?

And she said, No, no, my daughter.

And I went, Your daughter plays rugby?

And she said, Yeah.

I just didn't know there was such a thing.

I think that was a Wednesday,

and I went training on the following Friday in Blackrock.

So the rest, as they say, was history.

♪ SONG: The Verve - "Lucky Man" ♪

They were fantastic at being able to absorb all this information,

and we could see as the training sessions went from

our first training sessions where there were a lot of dropped passes,

a lot of forward passes,

beginning to understand when they fall,

fall in a certain way to make the ball available.

So all these things, as we went through the weeks,

got better and better, and they just felt more comfortable with it.

Now, it wasn't all easy in terms of getting time slots

on the pitch, not been able to play in the top pitch,

having to play in the lower pitch,

having to get out of the dressing rooms

so the man could come in and use the changing rooms an the showers.

Yeah, our training was on a Friday night when nobody else,

I suppose, would like to train.

6 o'clock. Our matches were on a Sunday at 12, so that we'd be done,

showered and out by the time the 2:30 game kicked off.

But I mean, we just got on with it.

We trained on a Friday night.

Then invariably, we'd go out.

It did gather a significant momentum,

fairly quickly to the point where you could have

a women's national league,

but you're still numbering the number of women who are playing

in the country in the low hundreds.

♪ SONG: Fontaines DC - "Jackie Down the Line" ♪

Social change in England happened much more quickly than it did

in Ireland and the place of women,

although England was a deeply sexist society itself,

it was also changing already

in terms of access to sport and sporting facilities.

We'd been playing for four or five years.

Yeah, I think I've been playing 10 years, actually.

Yeah, I'm much younger than you. (Laughter)

When you played for divisional for Midlands,

you had to sign to say you're available for English selection.

When you live away from home,

your sense of Irishness,

I would say from your appearance as well, is massive.

You're very proud of your home,

and you're very proud to be Irish, aren't you?

So it wouldn't be...

Not that I'd be selected for England, but if you did get in,

I don't think I think I'd be disowned if I went home.

I was mixing with those ones who were

going for the trials in England.

So it was the talk of English trials,

and if you went for the trials, you couldn't go for anything else.

It was then, it was like, there must be an Irish set up

or we should do something about setting up. Yeah.

Not that we'd get in, but we wanted to start the ball rolling, really.

We've got a resource of a lot of Irish players based in England.

There was this desire to play together.

Pulling on the green jersey would have meant...

It just means more to me. It still does.

I think England had already set up well Wales were set up,

France were set up, the States,

and a few other international teams were set up.

Some of them, I think, were pretty much associated or

connected with their own rugby football unions at the time,

but the IRFU,

I don't know why we weren't brought into that.

I think they might have thought this was just a fly-by-night.

It'll happen, it'll just fizzle out.

But I think there was a few determined people

that were insured to make that that didn't happen.

The World Cup was the following year, so that was another...

How could Ireland not attend another World Cup?

We missed the first one.

We're not going to miss the second.

How far behind are we going to be?

All those things probably contributed to it.

It is hoped to have a national women's team in three years time.

So back in '92... That was February '92.

So the following year, Valentine's Day,

we had an Irish team. Yeah.

♪ ♪

The clubhouses have been traditionally places

where men wanted to meet,

where they make decisions, where they help each other out.

Us becoming more involved by actually picking

up a ball and running with it or hitting a golf ball or whatever

has been a threat to that male space and a threat

to power, basically.

It's all just been how patriarchy has worked.

(Paul Rouse) And if you take a little step into politics,

look at the number of women who were in the Dáil

in the early 1990s.

Look at the number of women who have been cabinet ministers

since the foundation of the state.

And what you're looking at here at every level of this society

is discrimination.

(Sue Brodie) We just wanted to play.

Actually, so long as people weren't saying,

You cannot touch a rugby ball, then I was happy, actually.

I just wanted to play.

That was just the most important thing.

We had an invitation then from Scotland to play,

and they hadn't played, I think, a full international at the time.

So it was a bit like, now or never, let's go and do it.

It seemed like a pretty obvious choice.

We were going to be fairly equally matched.

They weren't too far away.

They were willing to come over.

It seemed just like the obvious choice, really,

in terms of the first proper international.

It would be the first international for both of us.

That was, that was, that was really nice, actually.

(Chatter)

Come on, harder. And the backs.

And the sides.

Come on Tania, go for it!

So I think around November, December, 1992,

we decided we would form an international team.

And...

Alain Rolland was going to be selecting, wasn't he? Yeah.

It was nothing that anybody would have experienced before.

So you really were starting.

It was like, Here's a blank piece of paper,

and then what do we need to be able to put a team together?

And I think there was a part of me that was definitely thinking,

I feel quite sick about this.

This is crazy because we've committed to this.

Are we going to be able to achieve it?

It was very challenging,

but the girls took on a huge amount of that responsibility themselves.

It was like another job.

It was quite mad at times.

I might not be good enough to play on the team,

but I would certainly have got a lot of pride

and satisfaction if I had been involved,

but not played or even been on the bench.

♪ ♪

We had to have a couple of different venues

because the girls were spread out

and there was a lot of girls over in the UK.

So it wasn't a simple case where we could say,

Here's one place that we can have everybody come to,

because there wasn't anybody paying for anybody to travel.

It was all at their own expense.

So the first trials took place in Sale Rugby Club near Manchester.

So it was one month before the match was all.

It was decided afterwards that you had to have trials in Ireland so

that another trial took place in Cooke Rugby Club.

I saw a little tiny bit in the bottom

of the rugby world that said,

Ireland trials in Cooke next month.

I'll go for that.

I remember saying... I played at Wasps with Kath Mullally.

I was saying to Kath, Well, you're Irish.

Do you want to fancy coming over to Belfast to the trials?

Oh, yeah, we'll go.

This is the pitch that we had the trials on or we held the trials.

I don't even know if we even asked, could we use the first pitch?

I think we just assumed that the answer would be no.

I'd never been to the North.

Only my family's from the south, so I'd never been to the North.

I remember seeing all the police wagons

and everything being a little bit nervous.

But up we went anyway.

Up we went to Cooke in the absolute horrors of weather.

Freezing cold, hailstones.

There was no fitness test. We were super fit.

I think they had games, a, possible versus... Probables.

...probables, and mixing them around, trying different positions.

I don't even remember.

I just remember the hailstones going sideways on the pitch,

having no feelings in your hand, but loving every second of it.

There was a lot of excitement.

We can do this.

We can build on this.

There's real potential for this.

And then for Alain to say you're in the team playing in two weeks time.

It's just so quick.

I just remember we got a tin of beer each

and just toasted it, and that was it.

That was the little celebration.

Yeah, privileged to have that.

That's just inviting you to the first ever game.

From Nicola Doyle as the captain of the Blackrock team saying,

It's such a good achievement for us to get five on the panel.

And that's what I remember feeling.

I remember feeling that there was a great sense of celebration

and success at the idea of getting so many people

on the panel on the first trial.

We were meeting people that we'd never met before

that we were going to be playing with.

And I think the next time we met them actually would have been

the night before the first international match.

Well, maybe in the future, in another 50 years time,

there might be a plaque or something to say that the first

Irish women's selection trial was held here at Cooke.

Sometimes it just takes a couple of people to make a decision

to change something, to do something that they really ,

regardless of what social convention says,

regardless of the barriers that are placed in front of them,

that they will make that leap and ignore any ridicule.

It's ponytail power.

That haunted us for years. Yeah.

I mean, we were looking for any publicity we could get.

We were involved in that photo shoot where

they caught us at the end of a match or training session

in our muddy jerseys and so on, and then brought us off

to have almost like a modelling session of clothes

where we were all spruced up and everything.

I have really strong memories of having the best,

best, best craic that.

We just had so much fun that day.

What message did it send across?

I don't find it the worst of what went on

or the worst of things that were out there.

It certainly did grab a lot of attention at the time.

And if that got a few more people playing

or a few more people interested,

then maybe it'll have been worth it.

Gather round me. Come on.

Gather round.

Spread out, girls.

If I may say so, you don't look very robust people.

You haven't seen us in our kits yet.

I haven't seen you in the kit yet, no.

But you're not heavyweight people.

< A lot of the time, it was, do you not think

it's very physical or very rough?

There was this, I won't say it's a hang-up,

but a deep concern, it seemed that it would be too rough.

And you don't mind the mud and the dirt and the- No.

Sure, it's a free face pack. (Laughter)

Well done. Alright.

Now, what? The hooker.

The hooker. Don't be funny, Dennis.

Which one is the hooker?

I don't want to hear that from you. (Laughter)

Which one is the hooker? You're the hooker.

How do you do? How are you?

I think it is really revealing that the leading broadcaster

in Ireland feel absolutely comfortable in asking

a group of women who play rugby, which one is the hooker,

with the obvious innuendo that swims around that question,

and know with certainty,

that not alone will there not be a problem,

but that he will get a laugh.

How did you get involved in this game?

I initially just started off because I wanted to get fit

many years ago, well, six years ago,

and I got completely hooked straight away.

I enjoyed the game and have developed from it.

But the hard question is, should women play rugby?

Is it a women's game?

We're not trying to compete with the men.

We want to compete on our own level.

We're obviously not as strong.

We're obviously not as big.

But women do not play contact sports, do they?

Well, I know a lot of women who played judo

and a few other sports like that.

And I would have considered them to be contact, definitely.

They'd always assumed the rules were different.

They'd always asked me, And do you tackle?

So I think a lot of times, they assumed that

you weren't playing full-on rugby.

I mean, so much of it is meeting people

and getting to know people and making friends.

Because of the team atmosphere, you have to- But you can do

that playing hockey, which is much more a women's game.

Come on, answer Frank, because Frank's stirring it.

This is great.

We had the trials, and two weeks later,

there was the match, so there wasn't much time to organise anything.

The Irish players would have had to pay their own travel to get here,

and then that would be reciprocated when we went back.

And I have to say, I don't know any players that didn't find

the cash to play for the country.

I mean, they just found it.

Oh, look, there's the programme.

From that for the first match. Yeah.

That's great to have.

I'm a graphic designer.

That's what I've done for a living.

So I knew that I could help with designing a logo,

I could do a programme.

I could I talked to the press.

I knew how to talk to newspapers.

But most things that were in print at that time were designed by me.

♪ SONG: Blur - "Sing" ♪

Lovely bed and breakfast in Edinburgh.

We arrive from north, south, east, and west,

and not one clue about the team we were going to be playing with

and on or about the team we were going to be playing against.

Not one clue.

That gathering on the stairs in the B&B, and one by one,

we introduced ourselves.

So quite literally, Hi, my name is Aoife Rogers,

and I play fullback, or I play 15.

And it went around person after person,

and literally meeting people for the first time

that you were going to put on a green jersey with the following day.

I'm Therese.

I'm from Old Leamingtonians, and I play number 5.

Pleased to meet you. Hello.

It was madness.

Didn't know who was going to be captain, either,

until the night before.

Gosh, yeah.

That was as a shock. Forgot about that.

Then Alain said. I was like, What?

What?

I think he had a conversation with me, but I was literally in shock.

It was something I hadn't thought about.

I suppose... do you know what?

I was looking at everybody else thinking who's going to be captain,

and I hadn't put myself in the equation.

But when he said,

it made sense because I did know everybody.

We didn't really have a coaching session with Alain

before that game.

We met him the night before in the bed and breakfast,

and the morning of, we went up to the ground

and we did a warm-up and we talked through.

I mean, it was really the exiles who knew a move or two together

who suggested we might use those.

All our focus was on us, what we were trying to do.

And it wasn't like there was 50 moves that they had to learn.

It was more a case where just try and concentrate

and this is what we want to do at the scrum,

this is what we want to do with the line out.

And when we get the ball to the backs,

we tried maybe one or two simple moves,

maybe a loop or a cut back inside.

Nothing complicated.

It was just, let's get, I think, 21 on the field or whatever it was.

And that was our makeup of our squad back then.

These are the jerseys.

So this was my jersey, number 15.

And...

On mine, number 10.

They were mediums, but they were men's mediums of the day.

It was such an unfortunate time period for fashion and rugby

because it was made of 100 percent cotton. And it must...

When you If it got wet, it was like...

And if you're 5'1, there was no Lycra vibes going on.

It's what it represents, what it means.

I'll hold up yours for a second. No, no.

Well, hold up your own.

So this is an actual jersey that was given to me by Ciara Gryphon.

Big difference. That's Ciara Griffin number 8

versus a fullback of the day.

Unreal. Yeah.

Pushing that shirt into the tiny shorts, it was ridiculous.

The arms came to here.

You just cut it to size,

and then you tucked it in and you

did whatever you needed to do with it, and then you just played.

You just got the ball in your hand and you got on with it.

I didn't have a problem with this.

My jersey, my jersey was about the right size.

I think we had to buy them if we wanted to keep them

because that was as simple as of course,

everyone just spent the £20

or whatever to buy the shirt to keep it.

But yeah, still, precious item to be handed.

Good to see you. Nice to see you.

Good to see you, too.

Hello. How are you?

You're still very tall.

Raven Place has historical significance because it's the place

where the very first men's rugby international was played.

It feels bigger? It feels bigger .

The pitch looks bigger.

Must be relative to your fitness, I think.

(Laughter)

I think it's still quite an amazing story that 1871,

the men played their first international here, and then 1993,

the first international for Scotland and Ireland

in the women's game was here.

What I love is the fact that this is still not painted,

and the seats are identical. (Laughs)

I'm feeling sad that I'm so old and crocked

and can't play any more because I look at the pitch,

it's in perfect condition.

There were people sitting up on the roof.

There were kids up on the roof watching the game.

There were people hanging over that wall over there.

The whole sideline all the way around was people all the way round.

I love that there are facilities now.

(Chatter)

I think they wooden benches.

I remember the benches, too. That's what I remember.

But I do I remember the blue as well.

No.

Hi, Tanya! Hi!

and as you say, the grass, and the mud,

and obviously, the excitement.

When we were in there, we said a few words.

This was something that was going to be historic.

This is something that was going to be...

No matter what happens next,

you're the first women to represent Ireland in a test match,

and you just have to enjoy the occasion.

Like I would have had, without really knowing, a routine.

The way you put your boots on, your socks on,

your sports bras, your shoulder pads,

gumshield head gear, all that stuff.

So we would have said a few words, but then I had to go out

because they had to get changed. You know what I mean?

It's not like a men's team where as they're getting changed,

you can still say a few words and continue on.

So we had to set a few things and then had to disappear.

I think it was more of trying to stay calm, not that...

Because if you over egg and your nerves get the better of you,

if you think about the moment.

This is the first time. Here we go.

This is the first time I play for Ireland.

Everybody was nervous at the same time.

Nobody knew what to expect.

Nobody knew how it was going to work out.

There was always that fear, what if we lose by 50 points?

But I think we were able to dispel that part.

I mean, honestly, I get goosebumps.

Even just thinking about it, I still get goosebumps.

I think we had a piper that came out, and for Scots,

that's all this gets you going.

But the anthems, anybody who ever listened

to an anthem who's ever played any sport or what sport,

you get your hair stand up on the back of your neck.

It is just the only time that happens is

when it's an international.

My dad flew over from Dublin by himself, actually,

and he came and took a run out in the pitch

and seeing him there as well was quite special.

It felt like...

It's not that we were mimicking the men,

the men are the men's game,

but this is something I've watched on television.

I hadn't watched women do it,

but I had watched it for years years and years,

and I thought, Oh, my God, I am standing up here in Edinburgh,

and they're about to play the national anthem.

An anthem is when people go to battle.

Is it not traditionally the pipes are for when men are off to war?

So you can't not get goosebumps when you hear an anthem,

but to do it and then know that you're the one

to step forward onto the pitch, and people have done that for you,

is just something incredible.

♪ ♪

There was a photograph of you kicking off,

which I think would be very significant

because it was the first ball kicked in anger.

Where is it? There.

That one.

The biggest memory is actually the connection with the crowd.

Because I'd never experienced that before.

So every time you touch the ball or something happened,

you got that reaction from the crowd, and it was just really nice.

It was big. It was busy.

For the few Irish were there,

including my brother, he could be clearly haired on the pitch.

But there was an isolated cheers for Ireland

at stages throughout the game.

Memories of the match, an honest memory of the match is

not a good one for me because the very first touch of the ball,

the first touch I had when I made that spin pass,

which I'd visualised since I was five, it was terrible.

It was so bad.

And I remember the crowd groaned.

And I thought, Oh God.

That was my personal memory.

Luckily for me, I pulled it back and there was

a couple of better ones as the game progressed.

But the game memory, in general, it passed really quickly.

Skill set, if you were to look back at that now, compared

to how the girls play now.

It's not fair to be able to compare what

happened 30 years ago to what's happening now.

It's the same with the men's game, even.

You look at how the game was played back then to the way it is today.

It's like it's a different game altogether.

But when they put a few things together, it went well.

It was a very close contest.

It really was.

We did have a rolling ball at one point,

and it was just going beautifully,

and I was thinking, Yeah, this is great. Let's build on this.

The Irish-based players within that first team, they were good players.

We certainly didn't think they were a level below.

And I think they got a lot of experience out of those early games.

It was a step up.

It was great to play at that level.

I think all the girls were fit and athletes as well.

So they were grand, really good.

Yeah, natural athletes.

I remember loving it.

I remember thinking that we're good enough to win this game.

♪ (Sombre music) ♪

And if only we had had a week or two,

we're as good as this team and probably better.

It absolutely was not easy.

Nobody knew what the outcome was going to be.

It was a good close match.

I do remember it was more of a forwards game,

and I think we would have been mopping up their attacks

from the back's point of view.

That's maybe bias, but as forwards, I thought we had the stronger pack.

Yeah, definitely.

I think from memory, we came close to their line on a good few occasions.

There was nothing in it.

There really wasn't.

The first try was a back row move in the far corner to the right.

Fairly simple, like number eight to nine and over.

The Scots score just before half-time.

When we're in the dressing room, I mean,

Alain said it like it was all to play for.

We had it.

There you are. That's a great photograph of you.

Getting ready for another Scottish attack, maybe.

Kim Littlejohn.

There was a tackle she did where she absolutely smacked.

It was a crunching tackle, and the crowd went, oh,

that noise that the crowd makes when they see something.

And I remember just being so, wow, this is incredible.

This is incredible. This is happening.

So I would think that a lot of people that came to watch

for the first time probably could see

that we still had a lot to learn,

but they would see also that we gave it 100 percent on the pitch.

Of course, we weren't perfect, but there was a real passion in there.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, honestly, the we wanted to come off the result...

we wanted to win. Of course we did.

But I think you could ask every player what was

most important at that moment, and it was that we played well.

Felt like we were sisters in arms in that respect.

I think we had the same mission was to educate the men around

the pitch that women could play rugby.

You can only do what you can do.

You're not playing.

You're trying not to emulate the men's style of rugby.

And less kicking, more running.

And that was the one thing that I remember.

Yeah, a lot of people observed that over the years.

Almost like that it could be more enjoyable to watch.

I think it must have been well into the second half.

It was down the our corner, and it was a charge down.

So the Irish were defending the 22, I seem to remember.

And it was a charge.

I can't remember if I charged it, and maybe not.

I might have just landed on someone else charging.

And it was such good spirit because it was a tight game.

And there were times where we were absolutely not

thinking we'd won that game.

So that was It was a real moment where I think by then, 10-nil,

you feel maybe we've just won the game here now

because it was quite towards the end of the second half,

I think, when that happened.

I think we were absolutely gutted.

I remember being determined that

it wasn't going to be like a one-cap thing.

Yeah, definitely. We're going to...

Come back.

It stays with you.

I would still wish you had won it.

(Cheering and applause)

So you can choose to focus on not winning,

or you can choose to focus on what we did create

and what we did manage to do.

The match ended, and it was Valentine's Day.

So one of our girls was her mother was a florist.

She handed us all roses.

So that's the roses.

And I think it was after- After the game.

The fact it was an English rose, we were trying not to worry about,

it wasn't a thistle, it was a red rose.

And we were like, Oh, thanks.

So we've got these photos of us all holding this red rose,

not really knowing what to do with it.

I suppose we had created history together,

and we couldn't have done it without them,

and they couldn't have done it without us.

In fact, I have a lovely memory of my father who's now...

He's since passed, but he came up to me and honestly

tears in his eyes in the clubhouse. He had a beer.

He's hugging me, and he helped me understand

what had happened that day.

He actually said, You never need to play again.

You all go down in history. You'll be on...

It's like, Hey, dad, don't be...

But of course, here we are, 30 years later,

and he couldn't have been more true what he said.

It's always held a very special part of what I would have felt as

being achievements in my career.

Yes, I've been successful.

I've been fortunate to be involved in a number of things,

both as a player and as a referee.

But this never happened before.

There has never been an international before.

And that in itself is very special.

Our coach said, I think we should go to the World Cup.

We were like, Can you imagine? (Gasps) Wow.

Yes, please! So that became the new goal.

And there was 18 months,

which at that time was going to be in Holland.

And so for us, we felt we suddenly had this new mission.

It's like the Olympics for us.

It was like we had something to work towards.

Well, I was still the chair

of the Scottish Women's Rugby Union at that point,

and it was me that received the fax from the Dutch organisers

to say that it had been cancelled, which was quite stunning, actually.

I mean, I was quite stunned.

I was a player who was emotionally gutted by that news.

I was also an administrator.

I just, probably quite naively,

just thought, Well, it's only a tournament.

We just thought, we'll just organise it here.

And the whole reason for us playing that game was so we could

enter into the World Cup the following year,

which was held in Edinburgh.

So it was lovely to be in Edinburgh again and to see the girls again.

We'd go support them and they would support us.

So it was lovely to have that.

I remember the World Cup letter said something like,

We want to go to the World Cup,

but we need you to commit to £200 worth of hotel.

Yeah. Which was a lot of money back then.

You'd to pay for a sub. In school, yeah.

To cover her teaching because it was in April.

I was freelancer, so if you don't like,

you don't work, you don't get paid.

So people made a lot of sacrifices,

but those sacrifices for those two weeks,

we were able to train, have a match, analyse,

train again, next match.

And that's what we didn't have in the very first match.

But we knew once we had that condensed time together,

we would establish a good solid foundation.

And so the World Cup cemented that completely.

France, USA. That's France.

USA. USA. Okay. Scotland.

Scotland.

Alright. Okay.

I'm not sure the rest of my body.

Do you know, the most important thing that stays with me about

the World Championships in 94, let's call it the World Cup now,

which apparently we're allowed to use,

is that there were women that were not able to play in it.

There were still women that were excluded.

Nations where the women's rugby was affiliated to their men's union

meant that the IRFB would not allow them to play.

So New Zealand couldn't be there.

They weren't allowed to come.

And obviously, the Dutch couldn't come.

They weren't allowed to come.

They were not allowed to play.

Their governing bodies prevented them from playing their sport.

The It should be some recognition about the fact

that there were women that were not allowed to play.

And that's the bit that actually stays with me.

(Alain) It put the game on, I suppose, on the radar.

It meant that women knew that there was an opportunity

to play the game.

It began to grow a little bit.

Now it was slow, but it began to grow a little bit.

But if you go fast forward to 2013 and you look at the success

of that Irish team, that kicked it to a whole new level then.

Stacey Lee-Kennedy, and to the front they go,

and Reilly grabs hold of it, grasps hold of the opportunity,

and Muldoon fires it to touch, and is that it?

(Full-time whistle) Yes, it is!

♪ SONG: Avicii - "Levels" ♪

Ireland, are the Grand Slam champions.

It wasn't pretty, but it was committed and it was courageous.

It is a wonderful day for Irish women's rugby.

Oh, God, Ryan, you said it.

At times it's felt like a dream, the Six Nations, but I tell you,

those girls have been absolutely outstanding.

And all the girls that are here today

who've all put on the Irish jersey, it's a legacy.

And I know that the 23, the 24 out there

all feel that they're only in possession of this Irish jersey

for a short while and that that legacy lives on.

It is just the most fantastic day.

I remember going, I cannot believe... I did not expect

to see this in my lifetime, was what I saw to see women's

rugby being played on television.

And in the same breath as, well, it's about time.

Good evening. Welcome to The Late Late Show.

My first guests this evening have been the underdogs

of their chosen sport for several years,

but on St. Patrick's Day,

they silenced their critics and lifted the spirit of the nation.

Would you welcome, please, Ladies and gentlemen,

Grand Slam champions,

the Ireland women's rugby team, ladies and gentlemen.

♪ (Late Late house band plays "Hall of Fame" by The Script) ♪

between the appearance on The Late Late Show around Tubridy in 2013

as against the one from two decades previously,

where it was as if it was a kind of a freak show presentation.

But 2013 was respect, belatedly given,

but respect for people who had achieved something

remarkable in Irish sport.

But what about the section of society...

I don't know if it's big or small at all

who say that they'd prefer if women didn't play rugby.

Do people like that still exist any more?

I think it's fading out.

It must be. Yeah, no, it is.

We've had such positive reception this season.

It's absolutely been brilliant.

I don't see why sport has to be gender-specific.

We should be delighted that people are being fit, healthy,

and enjoying something that they do

and trying to achieve the best they can.

So, yeah, it shouldn't be gender-specific.

The exposure that they got

and the subsequent appearances at the World Cups

and beating New Zealand,

and that started just to feed it an awful lot more.

And the same thing was happening in other countries.

♪ SONG: Blur - "The Universal" ♪

It's going to continue to grow.

It's now a case where women's rugby is no longer

tagged on to when men's rugby is being played.

It's very much got its own identity now, and rightly so.

Now, the young people that are coming through,

they're absolutely seeing it as an option.

So the world has changed for the better.

And I think the next decade is going to be sell-out crowds.

I think they're going to outgrow some of the smaller stadiums,

which is what the women now are doing

in the Premier League in football.

I know it's hard to get my head around, actually.

And you're watching this thinking, My goodness.

I actually find it quite hard to realise,

but it is incredible to think that we are definitely all connected.

We were like the little acorns.

(Laughs)

Yeah, it means a lot to me. It really does.

The whole...

I played rugby for 20 years.

I can't imagine what my life would have been like

without playing rugby.

What I'd be like as a person, I'd definitely be a different person.

My whole life path would have been very different.

Well, not that long ago,

my youngest said to me he was proud of me, which was lovely.

♪ This is the next century

♪ Where the universal's free

♪ How we like to sing along

♪ Though the words are wrong

♪ It really, really, really could happen

♪ Yes, it really, really, when it could happen

♪ When the days they seem to fall through you, well, just let them go.

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