Bourke’s steep learning curve

GILLIAN BOURKE only took up rugby in college in 2003; even then, she didn’t learn to scrummage until joining up with Connacht soon after.

Yet tomorrow, the 25-year-old prop hopes to be part of an Irish side that bid to upset hosts England at the Women’s Rugby World Cup in Surrey.

In most other codes, her progression would be something of a sporting oddity. But it’s not unusual for the Irish women’s side, many of whom only took up the game for the first time at third level.

“I got thrown in at the deep end; I trained with Connacht and I told them I could scrummage. They didn’t know that I couldn’t, but I blagged my way into it and learned from there,” explains the 16-times capped native of Scart, Co Limerick.

“I got to learn pretty quickly against some of the girls I’m playing with these days, like Fiona Coghlan and Laura Guest. I’d to learn the hard way but you pick up tricks as you go.

“John Hayes has given me a few little hints — maybe not the most legal things to do! — and they’ll give you that extra edge, especially against opponents who might be bigger or stronger.”

Bourke acquired her love for rugby while studying at the University of Limerick, and now lines out for UL Bohemian, along with more than a dozen of her international colleagues, and her native province Munster.

Her immersion in the analytical side of the game has now led her to a masters in performance analysis, which she begins in Cardiff University in the coming months. Combined with her experience as a youth development officer for rugby in Galway, it makes Bourke an ideal candidate to discuss how a love of rugby can be fostered in younger female players.

“You need to catch kids young in primary school, when they’re not afraid to take a knock or take a bit of contact and there isn’t such a big physical differences between males and females,” she offers.

“As they get older, you see a lot of girls getting involved in tag rugby, and they love it; but if you ask them if they’d like to come down to club training, they shy away from it. Whereas the kids want to do contact, but obviously, they aren’t allowed.

“If you look at the men’s sport, you see a lot of injuries, it’s international men’s rugby they’d (girls) be watching, and people shy away because they think it’s going to happen to them.

“The GAA have a perfect set-up — they have girls playing through into their 40s, and it’s because they’re sent down with a hurl in the hand when they’re four years out, without giving it a second thought.”

But before Bourke can help provoke change at the grassroots level, there’s the small matter of packing down against a powerful England side (tomorrow, 6.30pm, Sky Sports 2), who are one of the World Cup favourites and were finalists in Edmonton in ‘06.

Despite having never beaten England — who won the Six Nations with a 100% record, conceding just 15 points and winning all five games — Bourke shares the sentiments of captain Fiona Coghlan and coach Philip Doyle in reckoning a result that would be one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

“We’ve achieved our goals in our warm-up matches, the preparation has gone very well and the mood is really good,” she explains.

“It’s a big match for England, but it’s a really big one for us too. We have never beaten them, but we’re very confident that we could cause an upset; we’ve been very close to them in the last few matches. It’s good to play against a team we know so well, we have an idea of what to expect and have been able to prepare for that.

“They are the host nation and there’ll be a huge amount expected of them. Maybe that’s to our slight advantage, but at the same time they’re a very professional team and you wouldn’t catch them cold too often.

“But there’s no reason why if we put pressure on them from the first minute we might set them back on their hind quarters.”

Unlike the men’s World Cup, the women’s tournament is a 12-team affair, with only the three pool-toppers and the best runner-up earning a semi-final spot, with the rest playing out for classification.

Ireland also have the more physical but less finessed threat of the USA and Kazakhstan to worry about, but Bourke makes all the right noises.

“We’ve been walking around the camp this week, and a lot of the teams are bigger than us,” she explains. “But we’ll have played a lot more matches than them in the last few years, and we’d hope our skill level would be higher than theirs. We’ll have to up our aggression, but hopefully we’ve done enough to deal with that.

“We’ll be aiming for the semi-finals. It’s been a long road, we want to achieve what we’ve set out to do.”