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Ireland's AOIFE WAFER is bulldozing her way to potential greatness and the World Cup is another chance to shine

- PAT MCCARRY

I COULD GO on about that for all of this talk,” Aoife Wafer jokes as our chat, on a sunny day in Dublin, begins with a query about early rugby memories. “I started off when I was about six. My older brothers had made a deal with my mam that if they had finished their swim lessons, they could go and play rugby. My cousins were, at the time, playing with Gorey RFC and they wanted to go join them. Mam said yes and brought them along to the minis in Gorey. Myself and my younger siblings would have been dragged along as well on a Sunday morning - rain, sun, hail, anything.

“We would have been stuck in the clubhouse trying to entertain ourselves. The way Mam tells the story, I'm quite stubborn and I suppose that I am. If I want something, I'll keep pestering for it until I get it. I was asking her, ‘Can I go play rugby? Can I go play?’ She told me there was no girls team, so I couldn't.

“Then one day it was lashing rain and there wasn't a whole lot to do in the clubhouse. I told her, ‘Look, I'd be better off out there running around with the lads than standing here and getting cold.’ She saw my point, let me off and I never really looked back.

“Eventually,” Wafer adds, “my younger siblings got involved, so all us kids were playing for the rugby club. Mam started playing too and was involved in their first-ever women’s rugby team. It was something we did every Sunday morning and then, as we moved into youths, Tuesday and Thursday nights. I was 12, playing against 15-year-olds most weeks. I was always the smaller person out there but still stubborn and still bossy. I started off playing nine and ten, then was moved out to centre and back three.”