Considine content in her call to walk away, even as she sees the bright green future blossoming

With the 2025 World Cup on the horizon, the 33-year-old has called it quits on a glittering sporting life despite a stunning comeback to Scott Bemand's burgeoning team. But she's at peace and looks forward to watching things grow

BACK IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL: Eimear Considine with her Ireland teammates during the successful WXV 1 tournament in Canada. Pic: INPHO/Travis Prior

Eimear Considine got the fairytale ending she had hoped for her Test rugby career. The former full-back is now convinced Ireland’s current generation of players has what it takes to fulfil their own dreams as they turn into a World Cup year.

Some of those around the 33-year-old thought she may regret the decision to call it quits on a glittering sporting life that began with the Clare footballers and transformed into an international rugby career, first with Ireland Sevens and then the national women’s XVs. When Considine made the call on Ireland’s return from an excellent WXV 1 campaign in Canada in early November that had delivered a victory over world champions New Zealand and a top-two finish in the top-tier tournament, she was walking away from a squad transformed under head coach Scott Bemand. A return to the 2025 World Cup was approaching over the horizon and the women’s game was on an upward trajectory. Even more of a headscratcher was that Considine had just successfully returned from a long-term knee injury and the birth in 2023 of her first child, son Caolan.

FUTURE IN HER HANDS: Eimear Considine with her son Caolán in 2023 Picture : Eamon Ward

Yet after making her comeback during Munster’s Interprovincial Championship campaign in August she not only regained her place in the Ireland squad for the IRFU 150th Anniversary match against Australia in Belfast at the end of that month, she started at full-back, scored a try in the 26-10 statement win. That earned her a place on the plane to Vancouver for WXV 1, where she started on the right wing in the wins over the higher-ranked Black Ferns and USA either side of a try-scoring performance in defeat to hosts Canada.

Point proven, to herself and her coaches. But Considine has seen enough of the new-look Ireland being forged by Bemand to believe the upward trend can only continue.

“It’s all moving at such an amazing pace, both for the next generation and the resources that the girls have in place. It's going to allow them to compete with the best in the world, I really do [believe that],” Considine told the Irish Examiner.

“The most important game for us at WXV 1 was the Canada game and it’s because…people will say that we got New Zealand on the hop, they weren’t expecting us to be a threat, they were massive favourites and we were the underdog, so they were complacent. So the key thing for us was the Canada and the USA games, just to back up what we did against New Zealand and to show the world that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan.

“What the WXV 1 tournament showed us was that we were able to compete with the best in the world and it wasn’t just a fluke beating New Zealand, we were able to back [it] up. Unfortunately the Canada game didn’t go our way, we had two yellow cards early in the game and for 12 minutes of the game we were down to 13 players Canada scored two tries.

“So just take the rest of the games and the rest of that game, we won the second half and we would have won the game. Our discipline has to get better and it we will get better at that but I think playing against Canada and then beating the USA proved we are a top nation in the world at the moment. So I absolutely do think they can go on and compete with the best of the world and that they have the pathway and the IRFU are giving women’s rugby as much as they can to get up there.” 

Considine said she relished every moment of her return to rugby after two years on the sidelines, proud of her achievements in regaining her Ireland place for caps 27, 28, 29 and 30 and to have done that after becoming a mother. Indeed, playing in front of Caolan at Kingspan Stadium was the crowning moment.

“When you're younger, you're naïve and you think it's going to last forever and I knew I wasn't going to last forever. I was 33 and I was so grateful to be back to get an opportunity like I did," she added.

“I didn't know if I was going to be on that plane to Canada, so I was just taking it all in and the most special part of that game was Caolan coming onto the pitch afterwards with me and it was just something that dreamed about but something that I never thought was actually possible. So getting him into the huddle after the game, I was crouched down and he was standing beside me and looking up at Scott as if he was listening attentively to him, as if he actually knew what he was saying. But he was a part of something really special for me and he added to that.

“It was a really, really special moment and I'm not an emotional person but that probably was the most emotional time in my career, singing the national anthem and getting to look up at him in the stands and then after the game getting to have him in the team huddle.” 

CROWNING MOMENT: Ireland’s Eimear Considine with her son Caolán in the team huddle after the match in Belfast against Australia. Pic: INPHO/Billy Stickland

After her brief but enjoyable taste of life as a professional athlete, Considine has returned to teaching and, having returned to her West Clare roots in 2022 after 11 years in Dublin, now has a 15-minute commute to St Joseph’s Secondary School in Spanish Point. She's completely at peace with her decision to retire from rugby.

“A lot of people were really shocked with my decision because it went so well and I did come back after a tough two years," she said.

“I suppose it seems hard to leave when things are going so well, but I felt like my goal was to get back from my knee injury and play for Munster again. And just be able to walk off the pitch without an injury and on my own terms and have my son realise that his mammy does play sports.

“It was almost like I had two different lives, my sportsperson’s life and then it was my mother life, but I wanted to have that dual life of being a mother and an athlete and I wanted my son to see me playing to realise that it didn't just end when he was born.

“So my goal was to play for Munster and I got so much more than I could have even dreamed of this year with coming back in, one, because the recovery of my knee went so well and I was so lucky and then getting selected.

“Getting into the Ireland squad capped the dream and I went in going ‘I probably won't get picked for the Australia games, I probably won't get picked for Canada, but look, It’s worth going in’.

“Everything was a bonus, not that I went in there with low expectations but I suppose with the reality hat on me, that you've been out of the game for two years, things have moved forward at a crazy rate. I saw it first-hand when I went into the programme, how much it had moved on and how much the players had moved on.

“The standards, the coaching, the availability of resources for the players, it had all moved on and so I went in with the lowest possible expectation of myself, just to save myself the disappointment of not getting selected. Obviously I wanted to be on that plane, I wanted to play those games, I wanted to start, I wanted to score but you kind of almost set yourself up for disappointment if you aim too high.

“When I went in with Munster this year it was with low expectations, so just to play a minimum of games (off the bench against Connacht and in the final defeat to Leinster), and play 50-odd minutes in total this season, I was very happy with that, really contented.

“And then with Ireland I was just delighted to be in camp, and then I was delighted to get selected (against Australia), and then and I was delighted to start and then to score a try, like, you just couldn't write it."

If this all sounds like an easy decision, that's not exactly the case either. Considine admits wrestling with things before finding her final answer.

“If I had to write down my goals and what I wanted, and really put down of my feelings and my goals and thought about realistic goals, I never thought I could play for Ireland again," she admitted. "I never thought that I would start and I never thought that I would beat the Black Ferns and finished second with a team in a WXV.

“So that made the ending very difficult because I got so much more out of it but also at the same time, it made it very easy because I couldn't have written the ending.”