Irish hooker Neve Jones scored a try two weeks ago for her club side Gloucester-Hartbury, when they beat Saracens to win their third Premiership women’s rugby title in a row. She scored again in Ireland’s opening match in the Six Nations Championship, a defeat to France that does not sit well in the Irish camp.
For Gloucester she dotted down from the back of a maul and did the same against the French, hurting them immediately after their centre Gabrielle Vernier was sent off with yellow card before it was upgraded to a red for dangerous play.
The three Irish tries came from the set piece, Aoife Wafer scoring the other two.
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“It’s very exciting to go over the whitewash,” says Jones. “I actually can’t take much credit for it. There were loads of strong woman in front of me. They just threw me over the line and I just sat it down, so credit to them but always exciting to get on the score sheet.”
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Jones is a no-nonsense player, who faced the French in a short turnaround of just six days after the Premiership final. But trying to lionise her for the effort is a failing business.
“I think at the end of the day it’s rugby,” she says with an air of defiance. “You have four white lines and 80 minutes of rugby,”
Jones was introduced to the game by her father Dave, a Rugby Union player before he went to university in Liverpool, who ended up playing Rugby League. He introduced her to the game as a child and realising she wasn’t huge in stature immediately came up with the fix.
“I played mini rugby from six or seven, something like that,” she says. “Being the smallest on the pitch my dad was like we’ll work on the tackle.”
It seems to have been a success and Jones has grown to love the defensive work she must do in the Irish line. It is a labour of love, hitting players and bringing them down for the team. Few players put their hands up to dive headfirst into moving limbs and studs. Jones does but isn’t certain why.
“Obviously defence is something I really enjoy in the game so to be able to put defensive sets against the French as a quality attacking side was really good and we can take lots of strength from that into the following weeks,” she says.
“I guess so it’s just a bit of craic ... I guess being a middle child with three sibling that are close in age maybe something like that ... you’d have to ask my parents I have no idea.”
As Ireland face into their second match against Italy in Stadio Sergei Lanfranchi on Sunday, she will pride herself in that Ireland’s lineout was strong and her throwing was accurate. Work there with Alex ‘Codders’ Codling has brought that technical aspect of her game on enough for the set piece to be an important attacking Irish platform at the weekend.
Grooving the throw like a golfer keeps the swing on a consistent plane is the simple theory agrees Jones, although, she says she knows little about golf.
“I think it is just the confidence, and he’s tweaked a few things here and there but nothing huge because every hooker is different and throws differently so he doesn’t want to change too much, he just wants to instil, you know, we’ve got it in the tank,” she says.
“That’s back to Codders he’s done some great work with myself and the other hookers to improve on our throw and be confident in that as our job, so I think a lot of credit to him. He has put time and work into us and put us in contact with people in the club to grow our strength away from here.”
Simple as she likes it.
