The Ennis/Kilrush senior women’s rugby side will face Tullow RFC on Saturday 6th April seeking an opportunity to play in an All-Ireland final.
Back-to-back promotions are on the cards for the Ennis/Kilrush senior women’s rugby outfit as they prepare for an All-Ireland semi-final fixture this weekend as they face Leinster senior women’s champions Tullow RFC at 2:30pm in Drumbiggle.
The amalgamated senior outfit finished top of there league group with an eleven point advantage so far, as group games are yet to be played in the final round this weekend. A fourteen point win of 29-15 over Shannon/TUS on Bank Holiday Monday ensured the honours for the trophy cabinet, finishing the league stage with six wins, a draw, and a loss, against Tralee RFC, Shannon/TUS, UL Bohemian RFC 2XV, and Dolphin RFC.
Head of Ladies rugby in Ennis RFC, Lorcan Hoynes spoke to the Clare Echo ahead of the semi-final acknowledging the achievement so far; “we formed the team a few years ago, the two clubs came together to create a women’s team. Both clubs have had underage teams going back five, or six years, so we came together to form a senior team, so it’s a great achievement so far”.
“The team is only two years existing, last year we won Division 2 and this year we’ve won Division 1 so it’s been a great journey for us. And as a result of that, we’ve qualified now to go into an All-Ireland competition, in which Leinster champions Tullow is our next opponent on Saturday at home”.
Hoynes also acknowledged the hard work that has been done in both clubs behind the scenes in previous years. “Not only, does this success show the great work the players and management team have committed, but it also shows the great work that has been put in at underage, out of the 41 players that have played for the women’s squad this year, 8 have come up through the Kilrush underage system and 26 have come up through Ennis”.
“We started girls rugby in Ennis six years ago, we’ve had success along the way at Munster level, our U18’s won the Munster league and cup and our U14’s and U16’s have all won Munster competitions, but for the senior women as of now to do what they’ve done it’s been a great achievement for the club, and hopefully this will help grow the women’s game around the county”.
Lorcan stated that the women’s side shall be full of confidence heading into what is the furthest point reached so far for their senior side, “We have to be confident, they’re a great team and they’ve done really well in the league and they finished their last few games very strongly, we had a great win against Shannon on Monday, and they’d be our local rivals, so it was great to beat them in our final league game”.
“And we expect Tullow to be very strong, they are Leinster champions, and there is a lot of strong teams in Leinster and they’ve won there league well and they’ve been on the go much longer than us, but hopefully we’ll come out on the right side of it on Saturday”.
