Dannah O'Brien needs to be all kinds of everything for Ireland at World Cup

O’Brien’s run of games speaks for her durability, which will be tested at a World Cup, but the defining part of her play to date has unquestionably been a kicking game that head coach Scott Bemand rates as good as any he has seen in the women’s game.

Wed, 20 Aug, 2025 - 06:31

Brendan O'Brien

An Irish team, a World Cup, and an over-reliance on one out-half that is leaning into the realms of the uncomfortable.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

Ireland’s men’s team went through three successive four-year cycles with Johnny Sexton as the top dog in the No.10 jersey. Ian Madigan, Jack Carty, Joey Carbery and Jack Crowley all scrambled about for any scraps that fell from the table.

It was a dependence that came back to bite them. All of them. In 2015 when an undercooked Madigan had to fill in for an injured Sexton, four years later when an inexperienced Carty was picked against Japan and, arguably, in Paris two years ago.

Would Crowley have been left on the bench in that classic quarter-final defeat to the All Blacks had he travelled to France weeks earlier with a bigger body of work than the measly six caps he had managed in the green jersey up to that point?

And now to the tournament starting in England this week.

Ireland’s women kick off their 2025 World Cup against Japan in Franklin’s Gardens this Sunday with Dannah O’Brien assuming the Sexton role in terms of her prominence and importance in terms of what it is the team does and hopes to achieve.

The Carlow woman is different in that she is no veteran. Still only 21, she made her Test debut in Japan three summers ago, shortly after her Leaving Cert and on the back of a surprise call-up at a time when she was paving footpaths in Dublin with her dad.

Now O’Brien has started 22 of Ireland’s last 25 games and she came off the bench in the other three. Impressive stats, but problematic, too. It means that Nicole Fowley, the other recognized ten, has started just three games in that time.

Fowley’s last was in the 2024 Six Nations and her readiness for a role in England in the coming weeks hasn’t been helped by a watching brief in the two warm-up games against Scotland and Canada due to what is believed to be a minor injury.

There are others in the squad who can and have played the role. Enya Breen filled in at ten for a bit against Wales in the recent Six Nations and Stacey Flood started out at out-half with Ireland before migrating to full-back.

All eyes, then, are firmly on O’Brien.

“Dannah is a leader, and she carries herself so, so well on and off the pitch,” said tighthead Linda Djougang. “She has such a massive role to play, but she doesn't look like it. It doesn't scare her. She is well, well, capable of it and she shows that.

“She’s a player that you can always back up in the game. And to be honest, it's her first World Cup. It's our first World Cup. There is going to be a massive pressure, but it's nothing that I worry about. I know that she knows that we all have her back.

“We know that she will perform, because she always does.”

And Bemand spent eight years working with the Red Roses.

O’Brien, to use the vernacular, has a mighty boot. That left peg has allowed Ireland to slip free of tight situations deep in their own half time and again, and her accuracy off the tee is a huge difference-maker in the women’s game.

Ireland’s kicking coach Gareth Steenson has described it as her “super strength” but it’s hardly a surprise that a player in their early 20s and in such a key position still has a way to go in utilising that weapon, and others, to best effect at all times.

Finding distance up the park is all well and good, but it will have to be done judiciously against the likes of New Zealand or France with their respective back-three strike threats, and there have been both standout and sobering days when shooting at the posts.

Ireland have three live candidates at nine, at least four quality operators for the centre slots and a back three unit that is electric on paper but one that is probably still under-utilised. Plenty still to do, then: for the team and for their maturing No.10.

“Since I've come here she’s just growing all the time,” said Steenson this summer. “It's a confidence piece. I'm even seeing it in how she carries herself around the room, how she talks, how she communicates with the rest of the players, which only adds to that kicking element.”