Ireland’s team for the World Cup opener includes Ulster’s Brittany Hogan (centre), Aoife Dalton (left) and Aoibheann Reilly
BY RICHARD BULLICK
ULSTER lock Fiona Tuite will start at blindside flanker in an Ireland run-on line-up featuring 15 World Cup newcomers for this Sunday’s opening game in Pool C against Japan at Northampton’s Franklin’s Gardens (12 noon, BBC2/RTE).
Having missed both of this month’s warm-up matches with a niggling knee injury, Edel McMahon is back to lead the side from openside flanker with fellow co-captain Sam Monaghan starting in the engineroom alongside Ruth Campbell.
Tuite and McMahon will pack down either side of Ulster powerhouse Brittany Hogan in the back row, while the northern province’s other representative in Scott Bemand’s starting team is Ballymena-born Gloucester Hartpury hooker Neve Jones.
Aoibheann Reilly gets the nod over replacement Emily Lane and Molly Scuffil-McCabe at scrumhalf alongside Dannah O’Brien, and Eve Higgins edges out Enya Breen in the No 12 jersey as Ireland Player of the Year Aoife Dalton’s centre partner.
Despite her fantastic second try in the send-off fixture against Canada, Anna McGann loses out on the wing to Ireland’s duo of star speedsters of the current era, Beibhinn Parsons who also scored two tries in that game, and Amee-Leigh Costigan.
However, with Bemand reverting to the conventional 5:3 split on the bench having gone with just two backs in both warm-up matches, McGann is included among the replacements along with Breen and Lane.
With Ulsterwoman Jones packing down between regular starting props Niamh O’Dowd and Linda Djougang, the only player in this Irish squad with previous World Cup experience Cliodhna Moloney-McDonald begins on the bench.
The sole survivor from the 2017 tournament is joined as Sunday’s front row reserves by young Ulster prop Sadhbh McGrath and former England international Ellena Perry, who just won her first cap for Ireland last time out against Canada.
Former outside back Tuite’s deployment in the back row means there is no place in the matchday squad for Fermanagh flanker Claire Boles or Ivana Kiripati, who started both warm-up matches in the No 7 jersey.
Ireland head coach Scott Bemand with co-captains Edel McMahon (left) and Sam Monaghan
Grace Moore, who was Player of the Match in the opening warm-up match against Scotland in Cork, was expected to start at blindside flanker alongside Hogan and McMahon – if fit – but the Ealing Trailfinders forward will now wear the No 20 jersey as back row cover.
All four of the squad’s specialist locks are set to feature on Sunday with hospital doctor Eimear Corri-Fallon, recently returned from a ruptured achilles, named as back-up to her Leinster colleague Campbell and Monaghan.
Monaghan and the newly-married Corri started together against Scotland as the former made a welcome comeback following 14 months on the sidelines since tearing her cruciate during her club Gloucester Hartpury’s victory in last June’s English Premiership final.
This summer’s other returnee from injury was Parsons, who has bounced back from breaking her leg twice in the space of four months in the second half of last year, firstly at the Paris Olympics.
Parsons is joined in this weekend’s Ireland backline by her childhood friend from Ballinasloe, Reilly, who had the heartbreak of missing the Olympics last summer due to a cruciate rupture and finished this spring’s Six Nations as third-choice scrumhalf.
But she has got the nod for Sunday’s World Cup opener after starting against Canada at Ravenhill two weekends ago while young O’Brien is nailed on in the No 10 jersey despite veteran rival Nicole Fowley being put up for media duties on Wednesday.
With Clovers skipper Breen perfectly capable of covering outhalf as well as inside centre, experienced ex-captain Fowley predictably misses out on a place in the matchday 23 as does Stacey Flood’s fullback understudy Meabh Deely.
The other two backs who won’t be involved this weekend are Scuffil-McCabe – with Bemand preferring Lane as his replacement scrumhalf – and Exeter Chiefs centre Nancy McGillivray, who switched allegiance from England to Ireland this summer.
Meanwhile, the forwards who will be watching from the stand as Ireland return to World Cup action for the first time in eight years are Boles, Kiripati, loosehead prop Siobhan McCarthy and the squad’s only uncapped player, Beth Buttimer, who just turned 20 this week.
Ireland’s taliswoman Aoife Wafer, the 2025 Guinness Six Nations Player of the Championship, has yet to join up with Ireland’s World Cup squad as she continues rehab back in Dublin following a knee procedure this summer.
With World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year Erin King and adaptable back five forward Dorothy Wall both ruled out of the entire tournament through injury, Wafer’s situation has left Ireland’s loose forward reserves stretched.
McMahon being available again is a big bonus but, with the shock omission from the World Cup squad of the dynamic Deirbhile Nic a Bhaird, Bemand is opting to utilise Tuite as an additional back row option.
The Dublin-born 28-year-old did feature there for the second half against the Canadians in Belfast but, with McMahon just back from injury, it is perhaps surprising that Ireland have no other natural openside option in the matchday squad against the energetic Japanese.
Olympian Boles did come off the bench in the last two fixtures of this spring’s Six Nations campaign, and also against Canada this month, while rookie Kiripati got plenty of game-time in the warm-up matches but doesn’t necessarily feel quite ready yet for top Test rugby.
Apart from Tuite for Moore, the Ireland starting pack is along expected lines while the big calls in the backs were between the trio of scrumhalves, whether Higgins displaced Breen at inside centre and which two wingers started out of the three excellent contenders.
Having had seven missed tackles attributed to her during the Canadian defeat, the formidable Breen felt likely to lose out to Olympian Higgins, who has been in fantastic form, though who former scrumhalf Bemand went with in the No 9 jersey was harder to call.
There has been increasing clamour in some quarters for Moloney-McDonald to be picked in the middle of the front row but Jones had worn the green No 2 jersey in 29 of Ireland’s last 30 Tests until the pair got a start apiece in the two warm-up matches.
Along with Dalton, Jones is the only player in Ireland’s matchday squad against Japan to have featured in the official 2025 Six Nations Team of the Championship, with the compact pair also making this month’s ‘World’s Top 50 female players’ list.
The formula works well, with Moloney-McDonald a very experienced campaigner to have coming off the bench and complement the back-up props later in the game with her renowned scrummaging power.
One of those back-up props this weekend will be Perry, whose selection ahead of regular replacement loosehead McCarthy in the No 17 jersey may be more about getting her up to speed in this Irish set-up rather than being indicative of a specific pecking order.
Connacht’s Aoibheann Reilly has got the nod as starting scrumhalf for Ireland this weekend
With the possibility of both Monaghan and Tuite being replaced during the game, Corri-Fallon could have the responsibility of calling the line-up but she did so on debut against Kazakhstan in Dubai two autumns ago so wouldn’t be fazed by the responsibility.
O’Brien and Dalton both won their first caps as teenagers against Japan in Shizuoka three years ago this week, when Ireland won 57-22 before being beaten 29-10 in the following week’s second Test, which was the most recent meeting between these countries.
Ireland’s five survivors from the starting team that day in Tokyo are Dalton, O’Brien, McMahon, Jones and this World Cup squad’s most capped player Djougang, who is in line to bring up her half-century of appearances against Spain next weekend.
Breen and Moore were also in the run-on line-up last time Ireland played Japan, while Moloney-McDonald is the only remaining player from the 24-14 victory at the 2017 World Cup, when Ireland had to fight back from 14 points down at the interval in Dublin.
There are five changes from Ireland’s most recent competitive match, the Six Nations game against Scotland in late April, with Flood, Parsons, Higgins, Reilly and Monaghan taking over from Aoife Corey, Vicky Elmes-Kinlan, Breen, Scuffil-McCabe and Wall respectively.
There is also one positional switch with Tuite’s move to blindside flanker, which also applies compared to Ireland’s last outing against Canada, in addition to four changes in personnel from that recent send-off friendly.
Those four alterations see Costigan taking over from McGann on the left wing, that inside centre change from Breen to Higgins, Monaghan coming into the run-on team for Moore and fit-again McMahon back in place of Kiripati.
In terms of breakdown by province, Leinster lead the way with seven players in the starting team supplemented by two each from Ulster and Connacht, sole Munster representative Costigan and three English-based forwards including the two co-captains.
There are a further three exiles on the bench, again all forwards, along with the Munster duo of Breen and Lane, Ulster’s McGrath and single representatives from both Leinster and Connacht, Corri-Fallon and McGann respectively.
Ireland’s second group game is against Spain, back in Northampton next Tuesday, before the mouth-watering showdown with world champions New Zealand in Brighton on September 7. The top two teams in each Pool progress to next month’s quarter-finals.
IRELAND (v Japan): Stacey Flood; Beibhinn Parsons, Aoife Dalton, Eve Higgins, Amee-Leigh Costigan; Dannah O’Brien, Aoibheann Reilly; Niamh O’Dowd, Neve Jones, Linda Djougang, Ruth Campbell, Sam Monaghan (co-capt), Fiona Tuite, Edel McMahon (co-capt), Brittany Hogan. Replacements: Cliodhna Moloney-McDonald, Ellena Perry, Sadhbh McGrath, Eimear Corri-Fallon, Grace Moore; Emily Lane, Enya Breen, Anna McGann.
Eve Higgins (centre) has been recalled to join Dannah O’Brien (left) and Aoife Dalton in midfield
