Ireland women’s rugby rides a new wave as Aviva crowd record looms

In 2019 Irish hockey hatched an idea to use a pop-up pitch in Energia Park, the Leinster rugby grounds in Donnybrook. The pitch cost €250,000 and hosted the Olympic Games playoff matches between the Irish women’s team and Canada.

Ireland women’s rugby rides a new wave as Aviva crowd record looms. In 2019 Irish hockey hatched an idea to use a pop-up pitch in Energia Park, the Leinster rugby grounds in Donnybrook. The pitch cost €250,000 and hosted the Olympic Games playoff matches between the Irish women’s team and Canada. The 100m long and 60m wide reusable pitch had been installed in the Twickenham Stoop for matches involving Britain and New Zealand before it arrived in Dublin in June of that year. The matches were played over two miserable evenings with over 12,000 fans turning up in the rain to watch Ireland win the series and qualify for Tokyo 2020, reaching the Olympics for the first time. The attendance figures for the two games broke down to 6,047 and 6,137 fans, both setting records for a women’s international sporting event in Ireland. Earlier that year,...