A late bloomer to rugby, Lauren Delany’s path to Ireland caps was found in exile

Ireland international Lauren Delany's first sporting love was, in fact, basketball

David Kelly Twitter Email

April 14 2021 02:30 AM

It seems like all her life a ball has been attached to Lauren Delany.

Growing up in Coláiste Iosagáin, the Shankill native excelled at basketball, her primary passion.

Delany was on Máire O’Toole’s multi-All-Ireland-winning sides, jostling with future colleagues Lindsay Peat and Aoife McDermott on the hard courts for a school who also provided almost the entire back-line for the dominant Dublin ladies footballers.

It was when she left school that the palpably inadequate opportunities available to women in sport struck home, as her developments at U-21 and U-23 level were swiftly curtailed by a lack of funding support for those teams.

She didn’t necessarily want to be the best, only the best she could be.

When she moved to England to study a masters in nutrition, and subsequently worked at the Institute of Sport in Milton Keynes, basketball retained its hold on her but not its intensity.

It was then she discovered another ball, one with an entirely different shape and one that would radically reshape her sporting career.

Having also dabbled in Gaelic games, ostensibly to meet fellow Irish people, a chance conversation with a friend freighted them to the Blethchley Ladies rugby club and then, in 2018, the day that would change her life.

Forwards coach Steve McGinnis, former Ireland international centre Kevin Maggs, a pre-eminent exile in his day, and erstwhile rugby league playing legend Joe Lydon complete the team overseeing talent ID of Irish-qualified players in England. And Adam Griggs, current Ireland head coach, was at St Mary’s University in London that day when Delany, then moving from UK Badminton to British Cycling as a nutritionist, decided to take a plunge and see just how her nascent development in the new sport might match up with the perceptions of another pair of eyes.

It obviously passed muster; a few months later, she was lining out in her Donnybrook debut for Ireland against the USA.

Three years and 13 caps later, it was a case of better late than never for the 31-year-old as she wallows in an unexpectedly delightful second sporting life.

“I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without that IQ system,” admits the winger who embellishes her playing career at Sale Sharks by being rugby league outfit Leeds Rhinos’ club nutritionist.

“So I massively recognise the importance and the value that it can have. It brings an access to thousands of young girls and rugby players who could potentially qualify for the Irish system.

“So it opens up a whole heap of opportunities and again, a lot of players over here playing in such a high standard league as well.

“So yes, it has been massively valuable and all credit to them for having that really good system.

“I definitely owe my international career to them.”