Last Saturday against France at the Kingspan Stadium, Niamh O’Dowd put in her biggest shift yet in an Irish jersey. Not only did the 24-year-old prop from Wexford play for more than 76 minutes, but she led the Irish tackle count with 14 and had the same number of carries, with only Aoife Wafer and fullback Stacey Flood being credited with more.
What makes this effort even more striking is that, coming into this season, O’Dowd had still not started a Test match. After making her debut off the bench in the Six Nations opener two seasons ago against Wales, the Old Belvedere and Leinster prop had to wait until the WXV2 game against Colombia to win her second game.
She then won another five caps as a replacement in last season’s Six Nations, gathering more minutes each time to play the second half of the crucial win over Scotland on the last day.
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Back in the Kingspan Stadium, O’Dowd made her full Test debut in the win over Australia and remained the starting loosehead in all three WXV1 games and again in last Saturday’s loss to France.
Linda Djougang, less unusually, also played for 77 minutes, and O’Dowd said: “We both focus on our fitness quite a lot. So if games are coming down to the wire, we know that we have that many minutes in the bank.”
Yet, she admitted it was an especially tough outing against the French pack.
“Yeah, we knew it would be. Their scrum is very strong. They’ve big ball carriers. They’re obviously a bigger pack than we are, so we knew that we were going to have to front up physically, which I think we did for the main part in that game. It was a very physical game.”
What also marks out O’Dowd’s achievement is that she was still playing as a flanker for Leinster just over two seasons ago. Furthermore, at 83kg, or just over 13 stone, she is almost two stone lighter than the French starting tighthead, Rose Bernadou, who is also two years older and more experienced and was replaced by Clara Joyeux as part of a revamped frontrow in the 56th minute.
“It was obviously a very tough transition at the start and I am a bit smaller than most of them, but I guess I’ve just tried to work on my technique and if I can get my technique right, then I can try and outweigh the physics that are against me at times. I just try and work on my technique and then use it to my advantage. It can make it easier for me to play longer minutes.”
Yet, as evidenced by her being first up to make a charge down after a restart against France, O’Dowd retains her mobility as well as her carrying, defensive reads and tackling execution.
She attributes much of her progress to the backing of her team-mates and coaches.
“They let me play my game and then as well some of the coaching staff, like last year we had Dec Danaher and this year Hugh Hogan, Alex Codling, the knowledge they’ve imparted to us and how they’ve driven – not just me – but the whole pack, how they’ve upped our standards, I kind of put a lot of it down to them.”
One of the most striking aspects of Ireland’s performance against France, as has been true all season, is their tightness and unwavering belief.
“It’ll be the same for us focusing on ourselves,” said O’Dowd of Sunday’s difficult game against Italy in Parma (4pm local time/3pm Irish).
“We’re going to try and throw punches. We have our set-piece, we know our lineout works, we know our scrum can function. More of the same and then just maybe just tidy up on the execution.”
They also travel to Italy imbued with belief in the potency of their lineout and maul which has been well-drilled by forwards coach Alex Codling, whose good humour and expertise has been warmly embraced.
“We spend a lot of time, especially on the lineout, with Codders. He’s been great. His level of detail – we’ve never experienced that ... He also puts a lot of trust in us to get to that level. He backs us all the way. We’ve just put a lot of work into it every week and getting it all right.”
