Amee-Leigh Costigan: 'We really want to put in performances and we want to make Ireland proud'

MAKE IRELAND PROUD: Amee-Leigh Costigan is hoping Ireland will not get overwhelmed and will put in performances in at the Rugby World Cup and make Ireland proud. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

Wednesday afternoon, just three days out from a long-anticipated warm-up with Scotland in Cork. A World Cup, Ireland’s first in eight long years, is just over the horizon and yet Amee-Leigh Costigan is casting her mind back 12 months.

It’s a year to the day as she talks since the Olympic medal matches at the women’s sevens in Stade de France. Since the USA edged Australia to bronze and New Zealand had seven points to spare on Canada in the final. All of it in front of a raucous full house.

Paris was something to behold last summer. You can’t adequately explain the frisson that permeates a host Olympic city until you’ve experienced it and Costigan was part of a rugby programme that more or less kicked things off before even the opening ceremony.

“I saw the American girls and Canadian girls resharing their medal videos and stuff, so yeah, one year ago,” said Costigan. Wistful? There was a touch of it.

The Tipperary winger endured the needle for the obligatory Olympic tattoo after a campaign that saw the Irish team lose a quarter-final by 33 points to the Aussies before another pair of defeats fed into an eventual eighth place finish.

If that wasn’t the goal that they had set for themselves pre-Paris then Costigan, one of half-a-dozen players in the current XVs squad aiming for the World Cup after involvement in the Games last summer, is confident that the experience will stand to her.

“Yeah, it's probably a similar mindset for me, that they are two huge pinnacle occasions in both sports, and I am so grateful to be able to say that last summer I got to go to the Olympics and this summer I'm preparing to put my hand up for selection for a World Cup.

“So it really is a great place to be. The Olympics inspired me to become a better player. So does every game that I play, every session that I play, and it's had a good effect on my mindset around how I want to be the best version of myself on-pitch and off-pitch.” 

Now 30 years of age, and with well over a decade of experience across both forms of the game behind her, Costigan spoke of the goosebumps she was still feeling a year on from her part in the biggest show on earth.

The Clanwilliam RFC graduate stood up before the XVs group when they assembled for pre-season last month and spoke about the experience, and how it equated in magnitude to what they will absorb in the form of a World Cup in England.

Yes, she can now call herself an Olympian but she is still Leigh, still the same person, so the point made was that her teammates should embrace this without letting the enormity of the hoopla wash over them like a wave, or change them as a person.

“When the squad heads over to England we will have time to digest this feeling of getting to the World Cup and how it actually feels, but then switching on, knowing we're not there just to show up. We really want to put in performances and we want to make Ireland proud.” 

That a World Cup is ‘big’ is stating the obvious. This one is all the grander for the fact that Ireland aren’t alone in redirecting a swathe of their sevens players to the XV format for the year that is in it. The Black Ferns, England, France: they’ve all done the same.

But Scotland, first. This first warm-up game takes Scott Bemand’s side back to Cork for the first time since they faced England there during the Six Nations. That was a game that showed the progress made, the potential still to be unlocked and the distance yet to travel.

The visitors won 49-5, after all, and yet the buzz when Costigan went over after 24 minutes to give Ireland the lead on the back of a brilliant start was inescapable with the winger’s own exuberance in the celebration helping to ignite it all.

“At the time it was just, 'let's get this crowd going'. That's probably why I celebrated so hard. I don't usually celebrate that hard. But it just came off so well and I was like, ‘you know what it deserves it’’ and the crowd here deserves something to be screaming and roaring about’.

“The energy down there that we felt was something else. It really felt like an extra player. Coming into this weekend, I hope they give us good cheers if we win a turnover, win a scrum, score tries, whatever it is. They're just as part of the game as we are.” 

Let the odyssey begin. Another one.