Kathy Baker
Age: 26
Club: Blackrock College
Olympics: First
Baker took up rugby during her time in The King’s Hospital school in Dublin but her first sporting love was hockey, which she also played there. In fifth year the school started a girls’ Sevens team and for a while she played both sports before concentrating on rugby, winning representative honours at age-grade level. She progressed through the Ireland Sevens pathway and made her senior Sevens debut at the Kitakyushu 7s in Japan (2018). She recalled at the time: “My Dad loves rugby but as he said, he never thought he’d have one of us playing. It has been crazy, and I honestly don’t know how I got here but I’m happy that I did.”
Megan Burns
Age: 24
Club: Blackrock College
Olympics: First
From Tullamore in Co Offaly, Burns was heavily involved in a number of sports growing up, hockey to rugby to ballet and then rugby again was the sequence. She took it up in Tullamore RFC at under-15 level, before starring for Sacred Heart Tullamore in the IRFU Sevens competition. Burns was part of the victorious Ireland under-18s side that claimed the Home Nations Trophy in 2018, and she also won a bronze medal with the side at the Rugby Europe Vichy Sevens in the same year. She made her senior Sevens debut at the Rugby Europe Grand Prix in Kazan, Russia, in 2018.
Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe
Age: 29
Club: Railway Union
Olympics: First
A global star, the dual international and Tipperary native is Ireland’s leading all-time try-scorer in Sevens with 197 in 228 games. She has an athletics background (100m and long jump) and began playing rugby aged 15 in her local club Clanwilliam. She was selected for the Munster Senior 15s side aged 18 and was identified as a talent and invited to play with the Ireland Women’s Sevens. Crowe was the top try-scorer in the 2021–22 World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series (36) and was nominated for World Rugby women’s Sevens player of the year in 2022. She played 15s for Ireland when Sevens was suspended during Covid.
Alanna Fitzpatrick
Age: 19
Club: Portarlington/Blackrock College
Olympics: First
The Portarlington teenager made her interprovincial debut as a 15-year-old and while she now plays for Blackrock in the All-Ireland League she was a member of the PortDara rugby club when she made her debut for the Ireland Sevens team at the Rugby Europe Championship Series in Hamburg, Germany, in July 2023, just a month after finishing her Leaving Certificate. Fitzpatrick is one of the youngest ever players to play international rugby for Ireland. She joins a select group of Olympians from Laois that includes Anne Keenan Buckley (3,000m) and Frank Moore (rowing).
Stacy Flood
Age: 27
Club: Railway Union
Olympics: First
A dual international (Sevens and 15s), Flood played Gaelic football at underage level for Clanna Gael Fontenoy and Dublin, and soccer for Cambridge girls, before following her sister Kim – she played senior football for Dublin and rugby for Ireland – down to Railway Union after the club had supplied a coach to work with Flood and sixth-year team-mates at school. A very talented footballer, she first played for the Ireland Sevens team as a teenager in 2014, and along with team captain Lucy Rock and Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe, Flood affectionately refers to the experienced trio as the “Crusty Dustys”.
Eve Higgins
Age: 25
Club: Railway Union
Olympics: First
The 24-year-old criminology student was just 16 years when she was first assimilated into the Ireland Sevens squad and 18 when handed her first contract; all the while playing for Railway Union in the 15s code. Her former club coach John Cronin was a seminal figure in her development. Higgins was just 16 when she first went training with the Irish Sevens squad, played soon after in the Kinsale Sevens, and was given her first full-time contract with the squad at 18. She rattled through the milestones in both codes, Sevens and 15s, and is one of the squad’s outstanding players, skilled and aggressive on both sides of the ball.
Erin King
Age: 20
Club: Old Belvedere
Olympics: First
Sydney-born King has lived in Dubai and Doha in the Middle East and attended primary school in Doha before returning to Ireland, along with her four rugby-playing brothers Daniel, Matty, Conor and Liam. Erin played Gaelic football and represented Wicklow at minor level, but rugby has always had a strong hold on her affections from the moment that she started as a four-year-old in Doha RFC minis. Despite her young age she has already played 104 matches for the Ireland team, having made her senior debut while still at school. She has always been a precocious talent playing with the Leinster under-18s at 15.
Vicky Elmes Kinlan
Age: 21
Club: Wicklow
Olympics: First
The Wicklow RFC player previously represented Ireland at underage level in Sevens and XVs. She made her World Sevens debut in Langford, Canada, just over two years ago – she had impressed in a training camp in France in the build-up – and earlier this year showed her affinity for the BC Place’s artificial pitch as she scored five tries to take her tally to nine in 12 tournaments at that point. A superb tackler/defender she has become a strong player for the team, not least when helping the team to a first ever World Series win in Perth, when they beat hosts Australia.
Emily Lane
Age: 25
Club: Blackrock College
Olympics: First
A stalwart within the squad – only four players have more Sevens caps – she took up the game at Mallow RFC before latterly joining Blackrock when she moved to Dublin to study biochemistry at Trinity College. A senior Sevens international since August 2018, she debuted for Ireland in a Rugby Europe tournament in Kazan, Russia, in 2018, and in 2021 made her 15s debut for Ireland in the Six Nations Championship before returning to the Sevens programme. Last year she made the shortlist for the Ireland Women’s Sevens team player of the year, underlying her standing in and contribution to the squad.
Ashleigh Orchard
Age: 32
Club: Cooke
Olympics: First
A dual international who played in the 2014 and 2017 Rugby World Cups (15s), she returned to the Sevens game at the World Series tournament in Singapore in early May. The 32-year-old who first donned a green jersey in 2012 last played a Sevens event in Dubai (2018), a run of 18 tournaments, and had since then transitioned into coaching with Cooke RFC, following a cruel run of injuries. Having given birth to her daughter Arabella last August – she travels with Ashleigh to events – she decided to give Sevens another crack and fought her way on to the Irish squad for Singapore and now the Olympics.
Béibhinn Parsons
Age: 22
Club: Blackrock College
Olympics: First
The standout dual international started playing rugby at Ballinasloe rugby club at 13 having previously played Gaelic football, and at 16 went on to become the youngest ever player to be capped by the Ireland 15s team at senior level. She also captained the Ireland under-18 Sevens team despite already having broken into the senior set-up. She originally studied biomedical health and life science in UCD but switched to communication in DCU that afforded her more time to concentrate on rugby. A cousin of former Mayo footballer Tom Parsons, she is one of Ireland’s most lavishly gifted players who excels at both codes.
Lucy Rock (capt)
Age: 30
Club: Wicklow
Olympics: First
One of the most identifiable faces of Ireland Women’s Sevens rugby and captain of the national team, Lucy Rock (née Mulhall) has made a huge contribution over the years to the squad’s upward progress that culminated in a famous World Series win in Perth earlier this year. A principal playmaker for the team the former Wicklow footballer and Tinahely native also played camogie and soccer in her formative years, athletics too, while growing up on the family farm. When not playing rugby she works in business development with investment management company TritonLake, who sponsor the men’s and women’s national Sevens teams.
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