2024 was not a dream for Erin King, the World Rugby Women’s Breakthrough Player of the Year. It was a reality and she is hoping to make 2025 even better.
Words by Pat McCarry.
Back in September, Ireland stunned world champions New Zealand in their first-ever WXV1 match. Two 21-year-olds and a 20-year-old were vital in securing that victory. Aoife Wafer pilfered two tries and was named Player of the Match, while Dannah O’Brien slotted the last-minute conversion to make it 29-27.
Erin King, the youngest of the trio, crashed over for two tries in 13 minutes after being sprung from the bench for the closing half-hour. Two years ago, former Ireland captain Ciara Griffin stated that the women’s senior side had hit “rock-bottom”. Having failed to qualify for the previous Rugby World Cup, they sank lower when they finished the 2023 Six Nations without a single point.
Related: Everything you need to know about Women’s Six Nations
Few would have argued with Griffin, who was not alone in making the point. Ireland felt a long way from relevance. Eighteen months later, Ireland had secured a spot at the 2025 World Cup and finished second, behind winners England, in a highly competitive WXV1. A lot went into Ireland’s resurgence in world rugby, but King, Wafer and O’Brien are representative of the huge investment, and faith shown, in bringing through a new generation of talented, fearless players.
King had made her Test debut a fortnight before that thrilling win over the Black Ferns in a 36-10 victory against Australia, the country of her birth. Ten weeks later, she was in Monaco accepting the World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year award for the women’s game. Since then, the trophy she was awarded that night has had an interesting journey.
“When I first came home from France,” says King, “the trophy lived in my car because everywhere I went people wanted to see it. I just left it in the boot of the car. It definitely did the rounds of Blessington, and over to all my family, since I’ve been back.”
Erin King: ‘I was actually thinking, ‘I don’t think I’m a 15s player’’
As King prepares for her first tilt at the Six Nations, she is determined to back up that award. The breakthrough has come at a decent clip but some huge games are on the horizon. “Oh my God, yeah,” she exclaims, “it’s been a bit of a whirlwind over that second part of last year, right up to today. I wasn’t really expecting that much going into 15s. For the first few weeks, I was actually thinking, ‘I don’t think I’m a 15s player’.
“But I had always pictured myself playing 15s, so to get on for the end of that Australia game and win my first cap was such a dream come true. And to then go on, and for all of us to do so well in WXV1, was incredible. The girls finally got to reap the rewards of all their hard work over the last few years.”
Born in Sydney in 2003, King was taken along to World Cup games as a one-month-old. Her parents, James and Joanne, are from England so they would have loved Jonny Wilkinson, Martin Johnson and Co clinching the Webb Ellis Cup down under. Faced with the possibility, years later, of playing for England or Australia, King didn’t hesitate in choosing Ireland – she is eligible through her maternal grandfather.
“Growing up, my mam and dad wanted me to play for England, which could have made it really tough. I’m not a fan of them, especially when we have to play them! We’re big rivals in sevens, too. But I fell in love with Ireland and I’m so proud to be Irish. I wear that green jersey with so much pride. I could never think of playing for anyone else.”
Erin King of Ireland runs the ball for a try during the pool match between Ireland and Fiji on day one of the HSBC SVNS at The Sevens Stadium on November 30, 2024 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Christopher Pike/Getty Images)
Her father’s work saw the family move to Dubai and then Doha before, at the age of 12, King settled in Blessington, County Wicklow. “It was hard trying to get settled in a new country again,” she recalls. “One of the things I found hardest was that banter and the different sense of humour here, especially when I was in secondary school.
“But what helped was playing sport and making friends through that. I grew up playing rugby with all my best friends in Naas (RFC), and I still talk to them all every day. Sport was always that constant through all the changes.” King had started playing rugby in Dubai at the age of five and credits her four brothers – Daniel, Matty, Conor and Liam – for honing that feisty, competitive edge.
“We were always out playing rugby and fighting with each other. Everyone always asks me where my aggression on the pitch comes from. Maybe it comes from that.” The Leinster star adds: “They keep me humble, too. When I came back from Monaco, they were definitely quick to take me down a few levels and take the piss. It’s great. You have to have people like that around you.”
King played locally, in Blessington, before following some of her friends to Naas RFC, the next county over, in Kildare. With her father often away in Doha for work purposes, King says her mother and friends’ parents were key in all those car rides back and forth to training and matches. There were plenty of GAA and soccer games, too, but rugby soon started to look a serious option. By the age of 15, she was lining out in inter-provincial matches.
She switched from Naas to Belvedere, in Dublin, during that disrupted pandemic period and started to excel at sevens. She was offered a national contract at just 17 and recalls setting off for a tournament in Poland just days after completing her final school exams.
Erin King: ‘To even just qualify was such a big deal’
“I took the risk and moved up to Dublin, doing my school work online during Covid but chasing that dream of trying to qualify for the Olympics. The team hadn’t qualified for Rio and Tokyo, so it was a big thing in our squad. To even just qualify was such a big deal.
“Looking back at those two years, I’m so glad I went for it and put my all into rugby. But I still got my Leaving Cert done and ticked that box.”
Those exam results came in as King was in Cape Town for the Sevens World Cup in 2022. She was part of a team starting to turn heads on the sevens circuit. Ireland won their first HSBC World Series title in Perth last year and qualified for the Paris Olympics. They reached the quarter-finals before running into Australia and a rampant Maddison Levi.
It was during that Olympics match against the Aussies that King became a viral sensation. She displayed incredible strength to hold Emily Lane aloft after her team-mate tipped back when claiming a kick-off and safely brought her back down. Millions viewed the clip on social media and, each time, an audible, collective gasp can be heard as Stade de France reacted to the feat.
World Rugby Women’s WXV1 Round 1, BC Place, Vancouver, Canada 29/9/2024
New Zealand vs Ireland
Ireland’s Erin King celebrates scoring the winning try
Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Travis Prior
“The game was going so fast that, once I lifted her up, I was thinking about my next job. In the moment I didn’t really realise what it looked like. I didn’t know, leaving the pitch, that it had gone viral. It’s great for us as players and as a team to get acknowledged for all the work we put in to be able to do stuff like that.”
There was not much time to reflect on the Olympics experience – although the squad did party it up in Paris for a few days after the tournament – before she was called into Scott Bemand’s 15s squad. King followed up her bench impacts with starts in WXV1 against Canada and USA, scoring against the Americans after a quickly tapped penalty. Ireland will be keen to kick on from that tournament in a Six Nations that features home dates with France (in Belfast) and England (Cork).
“I think there is so much coming for this team,” King says. “I really feel we are going to do things we have never done before and break records. There is so much talent, so many great coaches and people involved now. Everyone just wants the best for us. I do think we are going to surprise people in the Six Nations and in this World Cup.”
The 15s side is being prioritised in this World Cup year by the IRFU but King hopes to return to sevens in 2026. It is no surprise, considering the plan she mapped out with her father as a ten-year-old when they put an image of the Olympic rings on her bedroom wall. Paris 2024 was the aim, way back in 2014. King achieved that but has unfinished Olympics business. She is already talking about Los Angeles 2028.
Erin King: ‘I felt so lucky’
“That experience in France has made me hungrier. I think we can go back there and win a medal.” Perth, Hong Kong, Singapore, Madrid, Paris, Belfast, Vancouver and Monaco, before that whistlestop trophy tour around Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin. Much of it still feels like a dream-like haze for King, even getting an email from the IRFU’s chief executive.
“I found out that I’d been nominated (for Breakthrough Player) when I got an email from Kevin Potts, who passed on the letter. It was only about two weeks after I had got home from WXV1. When I heard, I thought they had got the wrong person. I was like, ‘I’m not too sure about this!” because I had only been playing 15s for a couple of months.
“But it was such an honour to be nominated. I felt so lucky and couldn’t believe I’d get to go to Monaco for a World Rugby awards ceremony. It’s the stuff of dreams. I’ve watched those awards before but never thought I’d go.
“I got to invite a guest and I brought my mam with me. It was a chance for me to give back to her after everything she has done for me.” Aoife Wafer also headed to Monaco with her mother, Samantha, after being named in the Women’s XVs Dream Team. “Every two seconds,” says King, “I was looking around and there were people I had watched on the TV for years. Getting to mingle with them was great but then winning the award, I was shook. I didn’t really know what to say.”
King had more of a grip on her senses, though, when she was invited by her old school, Blessington Community College, to speak with the young students there. “After we came back from WXV in Canada, I went in and did a full day, speaking with every year. I told them my story, about how quickly you can become a professional athlete. How it’s easy sometimes to stop believing and how there are bad days but to keep chasing. How you can come from Blessington and still make it.”
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