Parsons on 15s and 7s: 'It's like choosing a favourite child'

The next 18 months should afford Parsons the chance to showcase her talents via Six Nations commitments, the HSBC sevens series, an Olympic Games and a likely World Cup in 2025.

MULTI-TALENTED: Ireland's Beibhinn Parsons. Pic: Laszlo Geczo, Inpho

When things were at their worst, when the IRFU was falling miserably short in its duties to the women’s game and the national team was failing to qualify for a World Cup, the competing needs of the 15s and sevens squads were seen as a symbol of the dysfunction.

One form of the game had atrophied from a point where they had been Grand Slam winners and World Cup semi-finalists to a watching brief from afar when the game’s best got together in New Zealand in 2021. 

A wooden spoon followed two years later.

The other form was shooting for the stars, to a point now where they are a serious medal contender at the Paris Olympics this summer having already claimed an historic first HSBC series title, in Perth, earlier this year.

There was an obvious sense of Peter being robbed to pay Paul given a clutch of 15s players had been corralled off for the sevens team. Now, at a curious point just months out from the Games, five of them are back on board for this Six Nations.

“I was more than delighted to come back to the squad with a new coaching set-up and everything,” says Beibhinn Parsons who is double-jobbing alongside Eve Higgins, Aoibheann Reilly, Claire Boles and Katie Heffernan.

“It’s been such a privilege to play across both codes. It sort of fell into place and with the WXVs [last October] I got a real good understanding of the game-model and now coming back it has been seamless. I’m really well looked after so it’s been really good.” 

The sevens side is in action again in Hong Kong at the start of April. Scott Bemand’s 15s will still have two Six Nations games to play by then but, while Parsons & Co have done some training with the sevens, they will stay put for the duration of this tournament.

It’s approaching two years since this tug-of-war conundrum burst its banks and into the sporting mainstream. That was when the dual players were rerouted to a sevens event in Canada in the middle of the Six Nations and before an away fixture against England.

Parsons played 15s in that WXV3 event in the Middle East late last year, and against France in last week’s defeat to France in Le Mans, but tomorrow will actually be her first game of rugby in a green jersey on home soil since April 10, 2022.

It’s no simple thing, swapping from one game to the other.

Sevens asks players to play six games across one weekend. The aerobic demands alone are monstrous. It is much more ball-in-hand and athletic when compared to a longer-form that is far more strategic and, for a back like Parsons, intermittent.

The loss to the French saw Ireland put in a serious defensive shift. Opportunities to be creative were few and far between, not just because of the home team’s dominance, but an Irish game plan that leaned heavily into kicking and territory.

“Hopefully I’ll get my hands on a bit more ball this weekend,” said Parsons. “But, yeah, it’s definitely different. You don’t get as many one-on-one opportunities but when you do they’re like gold-dust so you really have to take those opportunities.” None better than her.

The 22-year-old has scored 59 tries in 95 sevens games. Her numbers with the 15s stand at 14 in 22 caps, none of which can capture the power, pace and footwork displayed when she eats up hard yards or mines space on the wing.

There is a YouTube video dedicated to her that hothouses a breathtaking array of scores but it may be a run against Italy, a zigzagging barnstorm from one 22 to the chalk lines of the other, that speaks loudest for the danger she brings.

Parsons is, basically, the type of player who turns heads and the next 18 months should, injury aside, afford her the chance to showcase all those talents via Six Nations commitments, the HSBC sevens series, an Olympic Games and a likely World Cup in 2025.

It’s an exciting if challenging schedule for a player who is balancing her studies in DCU at the same time as all this, but she sounds like she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

And if she had to choose one form over the other?

“It’s like choosing a favourite child. I couldn’t tell you.”