Fryday feeling: meteoric rise of Ireland’s rugby captain

Nicholas’ uncle, Billy Fryday, is the groundsman and a past President of Tullamore RFC. Their first rugby coach, Colin Hughes, recalls Fryday arriving at training one summer’s day and saying, ‘I’m Billy’s niece.’ And it just went from there. “It’s odd in a way, that one sentence from her mum and now she’s the captain of the Irish women. It’s quite a journey to be on,” Hughes said.

The arc in Fryday’s story is that less than eight years after she started playing club rugby, she was promoted to captain of Ireland this week ahead of the 2022 women’s Six Nations. Fryday (26) is the lineout caller on the Ireland team but she’s never had to carry so much responsibility.

She has the second-highest cap (22) in the current Ireland squad (Eimear Considine has 23), which of course makes her a contender to succeed the retired Ciara Griffin.

“For me, Nichola was the absolute best choice for the role of captain,” says former Ireland teammate Paula Fitzpatrick. “She is very popular at camp and very hardworking. People tend to follow her. She is also very down to earth – her head would never get too big. The only thing grounded is that I know her father shines her boots for her!”

Fryday found a foothold in Tullamore and they realized their potential. And there was one difference that she noticed after the first few weeks of training.

“It was just incredible from the start: her tackle technique for such a big girl. She could get her ankle and hips and torso so parallel to the ground that it was very obvious that she had very good technical ability,” said Hughes, whose sister Ailsa is also in the Ireland squad.

“As much as she was tech-savvy to begin with, it wasn’t about ‘this is going to be a star.’ She was new to rugby and has slowly integrated into our team over the four years she has been with us. She works hard on her game. I would have coached a lot of talented girls who didn’t have that and who might have been more talented than Nichola. But they wouldn’t have had that talent or attitude.”

Fryday broke through just two years after starting rugby. She was named Tullamore’s Player of the Year in 2016 and went to her first Provincial Trial for Connacht at Buccaneers RFC that summer, where she was among 40 or 50 other players trying to get the attention of the coaches.

“Nichola caught your eye immediately. Her athletics were excellent. She was one that we immediately thought, ‘yes, she makes a really good rugby player in her’,” says JP Walsh, former Connacht women’s head coach.

“She was ahead, I think, in all the fitness tests. Just really eager, hungry for it.

“Some people just go about their work quietly. They know where they’re going and they just take it easy — she could be one of those people,” Walsh adds.

“I actually told her for the first few months and I think she was kind of shocked. I said to her: “You play for Ireland”. I would have spoken a great deal to Tom Tierney – the Irish manager at the time – and he came down to watch her play. And he said, ‘Yeah, there’s definitely a good player there’.”

And then Rugby had a plan for Friday. She made the cut for Connacht and played her first game for Ireland in November 2016.

She started blindside flanker and also played the No.8, but Irish management began to view her more as a lock. She spent two more seasons with Tullamore RFC, helping them to back-to-back promotions in the Leinster League, but then switched to Galwegians to continue playing in the AIL.

She signed for Premier 15 side Exeter Chiefs last November. “Your game leads by example,” says Fitzpatrick. “You might not see everything she does on the pitch because it’s a lot of thankless work. It could be things like securing a ruck, but if that wasn’t done we wouldn’t be able to get a try-out pick.

“She’s the kind of person who says what needs to be said. She is not a person or player who constantly yells and yells. I think she’s more measured in what she would say.”

Ireland will be the only team in the Women’s Six Nations not to feature at the World Cup later this year. There is talent in this young squad but inexperience could be seriously exposed in this championship which is a stepping stone for the new captain.

“There will probably be a lot of difficult moments,” says Fitzpatrick. “Nic’s role as a leader is about motivating people and keeping them focused on their purpose, I guess. Teams like England and France in these Six Nations are head and shoulders above the other teams at the moment.

“She’s a quiet person and people listen to her, they react to her, so I’d say she’s going to be good in terms of player management and keeping people on board, keeping them together, which is going to be difficult.

“Whenever a camp wins it’s easy for everyone to be happy, but when things don’t go to plan I think she’ll be a good person to keep everyone on track.”

Fryday might never have imagined that this would be the route she took to Tullamore for her first rugby training session less than eight years ago. But it’s her way now.