Journey to World Cup starts here
Ireland’s Eve Higgins is determined to right the wrongs of the past and that begins against Italy today
Ireland centre Eve Higgins got an early reminder of how brutal the Six Nations can be against France last Saturday in her first championship game since 2022. Higgins has made better decisions than the one she took after a quarter of an hour at the Stade Marie-Marvingt when she went ball-in-hand straight into the abrasive French tighthead prop Assia Khalfaoui.
A mismatch, you could say. The Stade Bordelais player caught Higgins and shunted her backwards in a thundering tackle that landed the Irish player on her back and had the French crowd oh-la-la-ing in approval. Higgins got up. Welcome back to the Six Nations, she thought to herself.
“It was a great hit to be fair,” Higgins says with a smile. “Great to see that it was in four different angles on slow motion on Instagram after. Apparently, my granny got the times mixed up, so she missed the first half so thank God she didn’t see me getting smashed to bits. It was a bit of a wake-up in the moment. To be fair, it was a great hit and there were a few of them in the game.”
Higgins (24) doesn’t have to absorb many of those ferocious tackles when she plays in the more free-wheeling sevens code. Last Saturday was her first Six Nations game since the 29-8 win over Italy two years ago as she focused on achieving sevens Olympic qualification last year.
Some rustiness is to be expected but Higgins also showed fast acclimatisation by being the last defender to kill a few early French attacks after their opening try. Transitioning from the shorter sevens game to the Six Nations came with a few culture shocks.
“I remember looking up at the clock at 12 minutes, taking a deep breath and only after thinking that’s a sevens game pretty much. So, yeah, it was just getting that second wind at the beginning and then I felt fine throughout,” she said.
“I kind of refer to sevens as you’ve no time to think. You do all your thinking off the pitch so that instinctively it comes on the pitch. Whereas you’ve almost too much time to think on a 15s pitch. It’s either backing yourself or just trying to pick the right decision because there might be three or four decisions to make.”
Higgins — who is contracted to the IRFU — might not have a big public profile but her talent is known to those in the know. In a preview of the Women’s Six Nations on ‘The Good, The Scaz & The Rugby’ podcast, current England players Mo Hunt and Emily Scarratt picked out Higgins as the Ireland player to watch.
After her debut against Wales in April 2021, Higgins has played the full 80 in 11 of her 13 caps. The Kildare centre excels in attack and defence including through her footwork, defensive reads and networking. And even though she only returned to the 15s squad before last October’s WXV3 tournament in Dubai, new head coach Scott Bemand and her teammates also saw a leadership quality in her too. When co-captain Edel McMahon was substituted against France, it was Higgins who took over as captain.
“We’ve gone from having a leadership group to having a player performance group. It’s voted in by the players so any issues or concerns that players may have in training feeds through so they have different people that they can talk to. I’ve been involved with that since WXV. There’s around seven or eight so it’s a good group for around the 35/40 players that are involved. It’s a good spread of different individuals. It’s not all players abroad, it’s not all centralised, it’s a good scope so it covers all areas.
“Before we left for Dubai, Scott asked me if I could be vice-captain so that was a huge honour at the time. It’s more so leading the backline. When Sam [Monaghan, co-captain] couldn’t play last weekend, he mentioned it to me if there was a possibility of Tricky [McMahon] going off that that could happen [take over as captain]. [I was] a bit nervous when I first found out but very proud.”
It’s becoming a smoother circular economy now between the sevens and 15s programmes. Dual players being dropped in and pulled out of Six Nations squads by IRFU decision-makers caused all sorts of ruckus in the past. It seems to be tidied up for this tournament. Higgins — like Béibhinn Parsons — will be part of the Six Nations squad until it’s over.
“I was involved in the 2017 World Cup, the extended squad, so it was quite different back then because there were the clashes of a Sydney sevens and the week after it was a Six Nations and stuff like that.
“Whereas that’s not the case anymore. For example, Hong Kong is next week [sevens series] and I’m here for the Six Nations. I can only speak for myself but from all the 15s programmes and teams I’ve been in, this has been culturally the best feeling. We’re a tight-knit group.”
Higgins slides easily between her hopes in both codes. She’s got the Paris Olympics to come this summer but her eyes also light up at the mention of Ireland’s target to qualify for next year’s World Cup in England. In 2017 she was 17 going on 18, which shows her prodigious talent, but didn’t make the final cut while she was part of the team that failed to qualify for the World Cup three years ago. It should come at the third time of asking.
“That is a huge dream of mine to play in a World Cup. Unfortunately, we didn’t qualify in Parma. Yeah, I really do want to fix that wrong and to qualify for next year’s World Cup which should be an amazing opportunity for women’s rugby.”
That bid really starts today with their first home game of the Six Nations
This has been culturally the best feeling. We’re a tight-knit group.
at the RDS against Italy, who are ranked seventh in the world to Ireland’s 10th. This team is in need of collective moments of shared celebration at home after losing every game in last year’s Six Nations.
We saw it two years ago in their win over Italy in Cork. Scrumhalf Kathryn Dane put a kick over the Italian defence which was beautifully collected by Higgins, who ran in to score a try which was later voted try of the round. Higgins was lifted into the air by one of her teammates as they crowded around her to celebrate.
What a lift it would be to see something, anything, similar today. But Higgins wants to make sure that all the dots are joined up first.
“The last Six Nations, obviously not winning a game was tough. It’s where no one wants to be. To be honest, we just want to work on what we could get better at from the weekend. And go into this Italy game confident in knowing that we can put in a performance and try and go for the win.”
And Higgins, one of the stand-out players in both codes of Irish women’s rugby, won’t take a backward step.