THIS TIME LAST week, Nichola Fryday was an Irish rugby player.
Today, she holds one of the biggest possible honours in captaining her country.
An undeniable Fryday feeling, so.
The second row will lead her side out for the first time tomorrow at the RDS as the Greg McWillams era and 2022 Six Nations kicks off against Wales [KO 4.45pm, live on Virgin Media One].
Fresh from today’s captain’s run, Tullamore star Fryday reflected on a memorable few days as a new chapter for Irish women’s rugby opens.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind of a week, to be honest. When it [the captaincy] got announced on Monday, my phone kind of took off. I was contemplating getting a personal assistant to try and sort through the messages, because there’s so many,” she laughed.
“Look, it was a really proud moment for me on Monday, when that got announced and the well wishes and the support that came through was just really heart-warming, and it was a really nice thing to get.
“Monday night, Tuesday, had to start prepping for Wales. From the high of the captaincy, it was straight back to business then for the rest of the week because at the end of the day, we have the match on Saturday to focus on. It was a short-lived moment, but it was good to get stuck back into the rugby side of things straightaway after that.”
The captain’s run went well, she reports — just like this week’s preparations as a whole — with an “excited kind of energy” around the Ballsbridge venue this afternoon.
There, she visualised what tomorrow will look like, and is anticipating big things.
“Being at the ground today… we had a huge atmosphere in November for those two matches. There was about 1500 [fans] with restrictions at the time, now we’re nearly at 6,000 in ticket sales – the atmosphere is going to be something that probably we, as a squad, have never experienced before at our home games.
“That’s hugely exciting for us, to have that support in the crowd and make that atmosphere in the stadium, I think it’s going to be a very good day.”
It’s now all about “calming down for the night” and focusing on the job at hand.
The Welsh come to town in a very different place to last year’s Six Nations campaign, when Ireland ran out 45-0 winners of their meeting. They have professional structures in situ now, as they prepare for the World Cup Ireland will, of course, be absent from.
And Fryday is expecting a big battle, with no shortage of motivation for either side.
“We know exactly the kind of team they are; they’re physical, they’ll bring dominant carries and dominant tackles so we have to make sure that we’re on form on the pitch tomorrow and executing the game plan that we’ve put in place for them.
“We’ve had really good training days on Wednesday and Thursday, and our captain’s run this afternoon, so we’re in a good spot for tomorrow. But it’s just about getting out on the pitch now and showing what we can do.
“We’re under no illusion that they’re going to bring everything they can, they have a point to prove just as much as us. So it’s going to be, I think, a really good match, to be honest. It will be one of the matches of the campaign, I think.”
