Nikki Caughey eyes revenge for Pau debacle
The flight from Dublin to Paris went fine. It was when the Ireland Women’s rugby team coach got stuck in the Parisian Friday rush-hour traffic on the way to the train station that the 2012 Six Nations assignment in France morphed from a trip into an odyssey.
By the time they reached the station the only option was an overnight to Pau via Bordeaux. Six of them per berth for the 800km journey and with just three hours sleep in the team hotel on arrival in the pleasant town by the Spanish border.
The stink it created wafted all the way back to Lansdowne Road and the IRFU offices where the union accepted a portion of the blame while insisting that there were more parties than them to blame for a fiasco that was almost rescued by a brave but agonising 8-7 defeat.
Not everyone was put out. Nikki Caughey thought it was simply wonderful.
“That was my first season,” she remembered this week, “but I was that young that I kind of enjoyed it secretly. It was an adventure. I didn’t think about the implications it would have had. Coming off that and losing by a point, I kind of want a bit of payback this time.”
Still, quite the bow for a 19-year-old who came off the bench in freezing conditions with seven minutes to go. She remembers it well: the 9,000 locals squeezed into the Stade du Harneau and the atmosphere they sparked into life.
“The whole town gets behind this women’s rugby game. It is really incredible. If you are playing good rugby you can very easily get that crowd on your side and it can be like playing a home game. They will support whoever is playing the better rugby.”
She didn’t make the return trip to Pau two years later when her colleagues fell short again, this time by four points, but she starts at out-half this afternoon, having battled back from two years of debilitating injury that started with a bad cruciate ligament problem.
It took half-a-year for that to heal but quad and hamstring niggles followed and it wasn’t until last November’s historic first autumn Women’s international, away to England, until her body began to find its way back to full health.
She’s also a Sevens squad member now, which means Caughey gets to make up for all that lost time by training full-time, unlike her 15s counterparts who balance their international rugby commitments with day jobs.
Her performance against Wales last week was good enough to keep her at ten ahead of the vastly experienced Nora Stapleton who has struggled with injury but today will be an altogether different test for her and the others with even less experience.
Both squads have been denuded of key players by the need to target the Sevens programme and upcoming Olympics in Brazil but Ireland’s women have yet to win on French soil and it is difficult to see them changing that with a less experienced outfit than those of recent years.
N Briggs (UL Bohemians/Munster); E O’Byrne-White (Old Belvedere/Leinster), A Donnelly (Cill Dara/Leinster), S Naoupu (Galwegians/Connacht), M Coyne (Galwegians/Connacht); N Caughey (Railway Union/Ulster), L Muldoon (Skewen/Exiles); R O’Reilly (Galwegians/Connacht), C Moloney (Railway Union/Leinster), A Egan (Old Belvedere/Leinster); S Spence (Old Belvedere/Leinster), ML Reilly (Old Belvedere/Leinster); P Fitzpatrick (Toulouse), C Molloy (Bristol/Exiles), H O’Brien (Toulouse).
Z Grattage (Tralee/Munster), L Peat (Railway Union/Leinster), F Reidy (UL Bohemians/Munster), C Cooney (Railway Union/Leinster), C Griffin (Tralee/Munster), M Healy (Galwegians/Connacht), N Stapleton (Old Belvedere/Leinster), J Shiels (Richmond/Exiles).
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