Dannah O'Brien a generational 10 spearheading Ireland's revival
Dannah O'Brien during an Ireland Women's Rugby captain's run at Stade Marcel Michelin. Pic: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
Accepted wisdom has it that you can’t win a World Cup without a top notch out-half steering the ship.
Well, the fact is that it’s pretty much impossible to achieve anything of real note in a Test environment without a top 10.
For Ireland that’s Dannah O’Brien.
She’s still only 22, but the Carlow woman is racking up experience and experiences at a rate of knots. Saturday night’s Six Nations meeting with France in Clermont’s Stade Marcel Michelin will be her 33rd cap but there’s more to this than mere numbers.
Her debut came on a tour of Japan. There have been wildly different WXV trips to Dubai and Canada, a World Cup, a lengthening line of Six Nations ties and genuinely ‘big’ games in front of growing crowds here at home and on the road.
Her performances so far in this year’s Championship are proof of a player becoming much more comfortable in her own skin as a Test player. We’ll go so far as to predict that she is on the way to being a truly generational talent.
Last week in Galway she was the orchestrator as Scott Bemand’s side utilised a stiff wind to build up a hefty half-time lead, and again when the elements demanded a very different approach after the restart. She looked to the manor born.
“Experience as a 10 is a huge part of it,” she says. “You just learn so much from different scenarios. Like you said, playing against the wind and stuff, just different international games give you different experiences and it's kind of invaluable.
“But I think just the way the team has grown over the last few years, that's helped me an awful lot as well. Because it's just built consistency, and thankfully, I've been able to grow through that journey as well.”
Mental strength is, at the least, just as important as any skillset or physical presence when it comes to rugby and O’Brien has demonstrated that time and again the manner in which she tends to shrug off disappointing moments or matches.
An off-day with the tee cost the team against France on the opening weekend in Belfast last year, but she responded by shooting the lights out a week later against Italy. And she barely blinked after kicking a penalty dead over the end line in Twickenham a few weeks back.
“It can be hard. When you're in games like that, you just have to focus on the next kick. If you miss one, there's no reason why you can't kick the second one. It's just trying to stay on track. You can have bad days and conditions can be difficult.
“The training never changes. If I kick all my kicks one week, or if I missed them all, I'll still kick the same amount of balls and just try to be consistent with it. You can't really force things like that either.”
O’Brien made an interesting point in addressing her evolution. Ireland’s stock was dangerously low in her earlier days after that failure to make the World Cup played in 2022 and wooden spoon efforts in the Six Nations.
What that offered, though, was the chance to dig into the foundations and start again at a point on the ladder that suited new players like her and Aoife Dalton who made her debut the very same day and is now a first-choice centre.
This is an evolving team that has more ground to cover.
This round three game feels pivotal in that. Ireland have stated publicly their ambition to record a top-two finish in this tournament for the first time since 2017. That was the last time, incidentally, that they managed to beat the French.
Ireland have never won in France in eleven previous attempts. That will have to happen now if their immediate goal, and that of breaking into the world’s top four, is to be realised, and they go about it with a very settled side.
Competition for places has edged real talents like Sam Monaghan, Eve Higgins and Anna McGann onto the bench but O’Brien’s importance to the entire operation is only accentuated by the absence of a recognised out-half in reserve.
Full-back Stacey Flood continues to be the understudy should anything happen to the Tullow 10. Enya Breen and Nicole Fowley are no longer in the squad. Caitriona Finn is, and is highly-talented, but she has yet to be capped at international level.
All of which only adds to O’Brien’s importance.
“There is good competition,” she says. “Caitriona Finn's coming up. She's still quite young, but she's unbelievable in training. Stacey Flood is there as well. She’s well able to slot in at 10. So we've a good few playmakers.
“I'm not really too worried about who's my replacement. I'm kind of just focused on the game itself. And if I get to play 60 minutes, that's great. But getting to play 80 minutes as well, I just really enjoyed it at the weekend.”
Bemand has described her as the team’s Tom Brady. This quarterback is only getting started.
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