Béibhinn Parsons: 'When your country starts to really get behind you it does feel a lot more important'

Béibhinn Parsons: 'It feels like it's really grown arms and legs and the participation and the uptake of fans really committing to each player has been massive'. Pic: Ben Brady, Inpho

FROM making up the numbers as the token girl in a Community Games team to record crowds in Aviva Stadium, Béibhinn Parsons has run the gamut of experiences in women’s rugby but the Ireland wing believes there is so much more to come when the new season gets underway.

One of the greatest measures of growth in the stature of the women’s game on these shores is the very fact that Parsons sits down for a chat having just cut the ribbon on a new Aldi supermarket in Dooradoyle, Limerick, a possibility which would have seemed far-fetched when the Ballinasloe 24-year-old first picked up a rugby ball to complete a Community Games team for a mixed division competition.

“We needed just one girl to qualify so I did it,” she recalled. “The one girl, that’s all you needed back then to meet the criteria.”

Fast-forward to 2026 and Aldi’s Play Rugby programme for primary school children, boys and girls, has become one of the IRFU’s prime drivers for encouraging participation and it is undoubtedly feeding into the rising spectator numbers at Ireland’s Women’s Six Nations games. 

Home attendance records for the national team were broken twice, first at Connacht’s Dexcom Stadium when 9,206 saw Parsons claim a first-half hat-trick of tries in a 57-20 victory over Italy, and in the 54-5 demolition of Scotland in the first standalone women’s international at Aviva Stadium, watched by 31,294.

“Our first home game this year was in Dexcom in Galway and it just felt like a festival,” Parsons said. “It was just so much energy in the stadium. It felt so loud. I couldn’t believe the numbers. I thought it was triple that because each area of the pitch, like, lit up for us.

“I just feel like we’ve really grown our own brand of a day out. It’s just so enjoyable. You really feed off that energy.

“That day for me, being from Galway, my whole family probably took up half that grandstand. I could hear everyone from every corner of the pitch. People I knew and so many familiar faces. That day probably was my favourite game I’ve ever played.

“The Aviva was so special too. It felt like a milestone as well. It felt like a grand finale for what was a really good Six Nations for us.

“I don’t think our girls were awed by the occasion or awed by the stadium. I think it felt real natural. It felt like, ‘We’re ready for this.’ Like, ‘Let’s put on a show,’ and I feel like we did.”

Home wins over Italy, Wales, and Scotland confirmed third place in the 2026 championship but the impact for the women’s game was wider than that, Parsons believes.

“This Six Nations, we saw it as clear as day. There were girls and they were so invested and had their favourite player. They came with a poster and things to sign. It felt like they were dragging their parents to the game as opposed to, a few years ago, it might have been the other way around.

“It feels like it’s really grown arms and legs and the participation and the uptake of fans really committing to each player has been massive.”

That comes from ever-improving performances on the field as Ireland, despite losses to world champions England at Twickenham and a frustrating loss to France in Clermont, have kicked on from their narrow World Cup quarter-final defeat to the French in Exeter last September.

Scott Bemand’s side’s next matches are their 2026 Global WXV Series home fixtures against the USA in a first international at Tallaght Stadium on September 20 and Japan as Parsons and company return to the Dexcom on the 27. 

SPOTLIGHT: Ireland's Béibhinn Parsons scores her second try in the Women's Six Nations win over Wales in Belfast. Pic: Nick Elliott, Inpho

Then there’s a non-competition rematch against the Japanese at Cork’s Virgin Media Park on Friday, October 2, before back-to-back Tests against South Africa in Cape Town at the end of that month. 

Parsons sees Ireland’s self-proclaimed ‘green wave’ growing even more momentum off the back of their landmark Six Nations campaign.

“I feel like it’s the most cohesive we’ve been as a unit. And I feel like my time in green, it’s definitely been the most clarity of what we want to do and what we want to achieve. And the actual, realistic goals where we can go after.

“We look back on that Six Nations and it was definitely successful for us but we left that France game behind us, I think. So we want to be World Cup contenders and we want to break into the top four and that’s what we’re going to go after.

“We have five upcoming Tests — USA, Japan, South Africa — all coming up. So we have that time to really hone ourselves and get ready for Six Nations again.”

A victory over either the French or English on home soil in next season’s Six Nations would be the biggest marker of Ireland’s progress.

Parsons added: “I think we do have the belief that we can do it. I think we just need to show it on the world stage now. That France game, it was tiny margins but I think that’s also experience.

“It’s the experience of having patience in the 22, sticking to the process, you know, was it three or four held-up tries? It was just those critical moments where if we had a bit more experience, exposure, and confidence probably in ourselves that we know the score is going to come. Let’s not rush it, and that scoreline could have been different. We could have been heading into the half-time on a completely different scoreline and then you never know what can happen.

“I think we’re growing that experience. A few years ago, we had a really young team but not much experience. We still have that young team but now it’s gaining that experience. So I think we’re getting to a place where we have a good balance of youth but also wise heads as well.

“Some of our top performers, week in, week out, are, like, 22: Aoife Dalton, Erin King, Aoife Wafer, we have a really young squad. I feel old and I’m 24 so I don’t know what that says about our team. So it’s great.

“We’re all growing together and really trying to spur each other on.”

The centrally contracted members of Bemand’s squad reconvened at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbottstown last month, though Parsons’ return date is a little later this summer following the surgery she underwent a fortnight ago to repair syndesmosis in an ankle: “It’s not too intensive of a one, hopefully it should be back in weeks as opposed to months.”

She expects to be ready for Connacht’s Interprovincial Championship campaign starting this weekend before rejoining the Ireland camp ahead of WXV.

Head coach Bemand’s post-Six-Nations message has resonated throughout the intervening period.

“It was positive. The growth that we’ve had. We targeted three home wins and we got all of them. We wanted to put ourselves on the map as World Cup contenders and we’re getting there.

“We all know that there’s areas for growth. We have to be more clinical against those top teams. They put you under an immense amount of pressure. It’s how you live with that.

“We’ve done a lot of work and we’ve grown a lot. Next year, we have England and France at home. What are we going to do then? It’s very quick to move on to the next thing and to change the goalposts and reset but we definitely enjoyed that night and spent time together. It was lovely because it felt like a real momentous Six Nations and definitely the most enjoyable I’ve ever been involved in.”

Explaining just why she is enjoying Ireland camp so much, Parsons referred back to the public’s greater buy-in to the team’s cause as much as on-field improvements: “I think it means so much more to me now. When your country starts to really get behind you and support gets behind you, it does feel a lot more important. Maybe that’s a crazy thing to say that external factors impact it.

“It’s always been something so special to me. It’s something I’ve been so proud to do, play for Ireland, but right now it feels like, wow, this is really important to everyone. Not just me, not just my immediate family. People really care.

“And I think it does add to it. It adds to the nerves and it adds to the excitement. These games, before they felt like a game in Donnybrook with 3,000 people coming to watch you. And that was amazing. But now they feel like an occasion. It feels like a Test game.

“And it’s blood, sweat, and tears. You know you’re representing your country, which you always have been doing, but it feels like the country’s behind you now.

“We love the crowds. We love the support and hearing a full crowd sing the national anthem. And when someone gets their hands on the ball and everyone stands up on their feet, it’s impossible not to take that into account when you’re playing. So it’s been amazing so far. And the support has just gone from strength to strength.”