Front row move proved to be Niamh O'Dowd's 'golden ticket' to World Cup

During the last Women's Rugby World Cup, O'Dowd was struggling for game time in the Old Belvedere back row. Now she's a fixture in the Ireland front row. 

It was at the WXV1s in Canada last year where Niamh O’Dowd nailed down a front row starting spot for Ireland. Pic: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile

It’s not much more than two years since Niamh O’Dowd was a flanker struggling for game time with Old Belvedere. Now she’s on the brink of her first World Cup with Ireland where, when push comes to shove, she will be the starting loosehead prop.

O'Dowd thinks now of the back rows that Ireland fielded at the time. There were giants of the women’s game like Claire Molloy and Ciara Griffin. Brittany Hogan, now the team’s No.8, was starting to embed herself, too.

“Like, I wouldn't have even put myself in the same hemisphere."

That’s now. She wasn’t even thinking about Ireland back then. How could she with the strength in depth at Old Belvo where Jenny Murphy and Jennie Finlay, both former internationals, were before her in the queue.

Hogan was another of them on those weekends where she wasn’t busy with the Irish sevens. Same with talents like Erin King, world XVs breakthrough player of the year in 2024, and Deirbhile Nic a Bhaird who just missed out on the latest tournament squad.

“It was actually almost as competitive as the Irish back row.” O’Dowd had never played rugby until she followed her older sister into the UCD club in college. That led to ‘Belvo’ just up the road in Ballsbridge and a slow but steady progression as a flanker that eventually took her as far as the interpros.

Then everything changed.

“I remember very clearly. It was a Thursday down in Belvo. It was actually [former Ireland player] Ailis Egan and Tania [Rosser, Leinster head coach] came up to me, and they just said, ‘you're gonna be a loosehead’.

“Now, before that they had been playing around with the idea of hooker, but they said, ‘no, no, you can't throw’. So they eventually decided I'd be a loosehead and I went down to Ballincollig for my first game, starting front row, and I absolutely hated it.

“I'd gone from being so carefree, just running around the place, doing whatever I wanted, absolutely no responsibility. Every knock on, I was like, ‘Oh my God, here we go again’. You know what I really realised? I have to get so much fitter now.” 

There was no more catching her breath come scrum time, but fitness was just one missing piece of this puzzle. O’Dowd didn’t know how to bind, or where her feet went, or what height she should hold. None of it.

The education process started at the club and Ireland scrum coach Denis Fogarty pitched in once she made the Celtic Challenge level. Cue endless technical work, video analysis and pointers from teammates.

Linda Djougang was an invaluable resource as the Ireland tighthead packed down opposite her in training sessions. So too Christy Haney, the loosehead who will miss this World Cup with injury, and hookers like Neve Jones.

“Every single session, every single rep, you're learning something.” 

Now a career that was inching forward was making big, galloping strides. It was at the WXV1s in Canada late last year where O’Dowd worked a groove for herself in the starting front row and she hasn’t been budged since.

Small in stature, she had all the right answers when giving 12 and six kilos respectively to France’s Rose Bernadou and Clara Joyeux in the opening round of the Six Nations in Belfast earlier this year.

O’Dowd was rock solid at the setpiece despite being asked to put in a 77-minute shift, and she decorated that with more successful tackles (14) than anyone in green and with only Aoife Wafer carrying more ball.

Three rounds later and that picture was skewed when England’s Maud Muir had her in all sorts of trouble at the scrum and referee Aurelie Groizeleau made her pay with ten minutes in the sinbin just after half-time.

One of the Irish coaches put it into perspective afterwards when reminding her that pretty much every prop in the history of rugby has had those days, and O’Dowd herself is first to say that her learning curve hasn’t flattened out just yet.

She’s ready for the work still to come, and immensely grateful for that curveball of a switch that will see her play in a World Cup when she was struggling to get off the bench for Belvo when the last one was contested in 2022.

“The front row was my golden ticket, and still is, to be honest. Like, it's always a position that's going to be needed.”