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Aoife Dalton: ‘I remember thinking will I ever play for Ireland again?’
When Aoife Dalton walks out at Cork’s Virgin Media Park on Saturday, she will do so with a quiet confidence that Ireland can put in a performance to be proud of against England.
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Although still three weeks short of her 22nd birthday, Dalton has become a mainstay of the Irish midfield and a key cog in the team’s revival, picking up the Player of the Match award for her part in the 54-12 Guinness Women’s Six Nations victory against Italy in Parma last month.
By her own admission she is starting to become more relaxed on the international stage, which in itself shows how far Dalton has come since England last visited Cork.
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On that occasion two years ago, Ireland were in the midst of a miserable championship, her first as a player. Having lost to Wales, France and Italy many predicted a cricket score when the Red Roses came to town.
“I was so nervous. I didn’t know what to do,” Dalton tells RugbyPass.
“We’d lost every game up until then and we’d had injuries and stuff. I don’t know, I was 19, I had never really played a team like that before, and I just felt so out of my depth.
“I’ve changed so much since then thankfully, but yeah, it ended up not being the worst game in the world. I think at the time people were saying they were going to put over 100 points on us and they didn’t.
“I don’t even know. You’re just hearing all this outside noise, and I was 19 and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I even going into here?’
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“I just felt out of my depth is probably the word that best describes it.”
England left Cork in April 2023 with a 48-0 win, on course for another Grand Slam, but as Dalton suggests there was a feeling before and afterwards that it could have been much worse.
The following week, hours after the Red Roses hoisted the championship trophy in front of a then-world record crowd in Twickenham, Ireland lost 36-10 in Scotland to confirm a whitewash and wooden spoon.
Coming on the back of their failure to qualify for the World Cup that had been played in New Zealand the previous autumn, and with off-field tensions coming to the boil, it looked as though Irish women’s rugby had hit rock bottom.
It was certainly a baptism of fire for the team’s 19-year-old centre. “I found it so difficult,” Dalton says of her first Six Nations.
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“I remember coming away from that and I was actually thinking, ‘Will I ever play for Ireland again? I don’t know’.
“I was quite raw coming into the squad anyways, I was only 19 and I’m sure as you can imagine, just low on confidence and everything.
“I suppose what made it a small bit easier was that I had friends in the squad, like Dannah [O’Brien], one of the girls I’m very close to. She’s the same age as me and we both played all the games and went through that together and sometimes we look back and we’re like, ‘My God, like, how did that happen?’ Do you know?
“But I suppose when you’re in it, it feels bad, but it’s now looking back… in a way, we’ve come so far from where we were there, especially me as a player.
“I’ve changed so much, and my mindset and outlook has changed so much and that’s thanks to the coaches we have now as well.”
Ireland are certainly a different proposition in 2025. In the two years since that day, they have won WXV 3, finished third in the Six Nations and beaten New Zealand.
That they were devastated to lose a close to game to France in the opening round of this year’s championship is another signifier of their progress, as was the chasm in class between them and Italy in Parma.
“There’s a lot of reasons why we’ve moved on, and the coaches are a huge aspect of that,” Dalton says, referring to Scott Bemand and his backroom team who came in ahead of the 2023/24 season.
“We’ve done a lot of work on rebuilding culture and stuff, because it probably wasn’t the best in previous years. But when I came in, it was a year after they had not qualified for the World Cup.
“Then we went on and lost every game in the Six Nations, so it was a very difficult time, but I think from where we were to where we are now, [it’s unbelievable] that it was actually just two years ago.
“So, I think the turnaround and how close we’ve become as a group, it’s really stood to us, and I think it shows on pitch now as well that we are quite a connected squad, and we put a lot of effort and time into trying to become that way.”
Dalton credits Bemand – who was in the opposition coaches’ box in Cork two years ago – and assistants Hugh Hogan, Alex Codling and Denis Fogarty with bringing a clarity to the squad and what they want on the pitch.
“Now we’re just all very aligned and we all have the one common goal and common purpose,” she says.
“I know I speak on behalf of myself and all the girls when I say that we’re so lucky to have them and you know they want it as much for us as we want it for them.”
But did going through what they did in 2023 also bring the players closer together? “I think so, definitely,” Dalton agrees.
“At the end of the day, we just probably all felt like we just had each other in that time. And I suppose, in a way, I think it never really allows us as a group to be complacent, just because we’ve been through so much.
“Obviously, for us, it was huge to put 50 points on Italy but we’re definitely not guilty of falling into that trap of, oh, we’ll just show up next weekend and get a result because that’s just not the way we are as a group.
“Nobody wants to go out and lose a game by that much or lose that many games in a row, but it probably has hardened us in a way, I’d say.”
Which brings us back to England and another trip to Cork for the world’s number one team.
Dalton will line up in the centre once again, alongside regular partner Eve Higgins – “she’s so good, so she makes my job very easy” – but this time nerves will be replaced with belief.
The one real blot on Bemand’s record as Ireland coach so far was the team’s 88-10 defeat to England at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham 12 months ago. Ireland are determined to banish those painful memories in front of a potential sell-out crowd.
“We just want to go out and put our game out there and try to put in a really good performance,” Dalton explains. “Last year, we were just completely blown off the pitch and we didn’t really get any aspect of our game out there.
“And coming off the back of the win (vs Italy), I think everyone was in such a good mood and, you know, you just want to go and do it again the next weekend.
“We know exactly what we’re facing into. I’ve had England twice now in the last two years and both have been incredibly difficult games to be involved in. But I think we’re in a place now where, if we’re able to go out there and get our game going, even for a few minutes of the game, I think we could put in a performance against them.
“And, again, we’re not shy of going out and saying we want to do well. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and especially after the last two years, we want to go out in front of our home crowd in Cork and be able to put out a performance for them.”
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