Wicklow’s Sister Act ‘Something Special’ For In-Form Griffey

After suffering a third ACL injury in eight years, it looked like Rachel Griffey was about to end her playing days. However, fuelled by the thought of lining out with her two sisters, the Wicklow forward has returned this season in her best form yet.

Rugby is very much at the heart of the Griffey household, and it was a hugely proud moment for the family when the three sisters, Rachel and her younger siblings Caitlin and Jessica, started together for Wicklow in an Energia All-Ireland League match for the first time.

Following that clash with defending champions UL Bohemian at Ashtown Lane, the trio made it back-to-back appearances away to Railway Union, and Rachel, a regular starter at number 8, took her impressive try-scoring run to five.

Rachel has had quite the journey to play with her sisters at this level, and while they did join forces for Wicklow’s J1s two years ago, it was three years into the club’s All-Ireland League journey before they could feature together for Jason Moreton’s side.

Season-ending ACL injuries in 2021 and 2023 were mentally tough on Griffey, going through the same surgery and recovery from her first such injury in 2015. She is back with a bang now, showing her try-scoring threat from the back row with five tries in seven appearances.

Speaking to IrishRugby.ie, she admits that each injury has been increasingly tougher on her mentally, but that her sisters were a big motivating factor in her getting back to put on the Wicklow jersey this season.

“Mentally, it kind of got tougher each one. Age doesn’t help with the recovery,” explained the 27-year-old. “So as I got older and I did it, I found it a lot more taxing to get myself back and get myself fit.

“The mental side of it as well was a bit tough, kind of ‘why am I doing this again?’, when you’ve gone through that. The two girls being there were a major push for me to get myself back playing this year. That definitely got me through this recovery.

“I found that at the start this year at training, I tried to avoid contact as much as possible. You’re scared unfortunately, because it’s not just the injury, but the surgery is quite painful. The rehab is quite painful, and then once you get past the pain, you’re looking at a very long road to recovery.

“It’s not a quick fix, and I think having gone through it before, you’re not going into it blind. You know what’s coming with it, so you do have that extra level of fear of how hard it is and just knowing all the roadblocks that will come up.

“When you do make that decision to come back to training, there is a bit of fear, especially in such a contact dominant sport. It is not a place where you can have fear or second doubt yourself.

“So, I definitely think for the first game or two, my performance wasn’t where I liked it to be or where it normally is, but I also had to give myself that bit of space to allow myself to get comfortable again.

“Once you take one or two hits, or your knee goes a little bit and you get a bit of a scare and you stand up and there’s nothing wrong, you do, funnily enough, very quickly forget.

“Once that fear goes, you’re back. The only thing holding you back now is any kind of fitness you may need to catch up on or strength and conditioning work.”

With Caitlin returning this year from Australia, Rachel knew that Wicklow’s latest AIL ‘sister act’ was a possibility. As this season’s early rounds went by Rachel and Caitlin were involved in every match, with Jessica making the bench for the first time in round 5 against Old Belvedere.

The following week they started together against UL Bohs, wearing jerseys 4, 5 and 6 on home soil, with Ashtown Lane being the place their dad Ronan first brought them to as kids to introduce them to rugby.

With ‘superfan’ mum Ruth joining Ronan to cheer on their girls from the sideline, Rachel said of that mid-November day: “Something special, I must say. I didn’t realise until I was actually on the pitch, how big a deal it was.

“We kind of just went through the week as normal prep, because we’ve had so many seasons where we’ve all been playing AIL but not been able to do it together.

“So it was kind of, I’d say about ten minutes into the match when we all either got hands on the ball or made a hit, and we all looked at each other and were like, ‘this is really cool’.

It’s not something I thought would happen with my own kind of rugby history with the three ACL surgeries. I thought after the last one, I was probably done with that.

“But with my sister Caitlin coming back from Australia, I just said I’d give it at least one more season, so that all three of us could give it a go together.

“So, yeah, it was very special. One of us is always unfortunately injured or abroad. This is the first time since we’ve gone to AIL that all three of us have played. The first few seasons, Jessica was too young. And then the other two Caitlin was away, and I had torn my ACL.”

Their parents understandably take great pride in the girls’ progress on the pitch, with Ronan, a former player, a real driving force for Women’s and girls rugby at Wicklow RFC for over 15 years, as their programme developed into one of the best in the country.

Rachel was the first of the siblings to play, Caitlin, who is two years younger, followed suit, and 20-year-old Jessica is the latest to come up through the Leinster club’s ranks.

Their close bond does make it easier to play together, Rachel reckons, and breaking into the league’s top four and competing for silverware is a big aim for both the Griffeys and this ambitious Wicklow squad.

“My dad was blessed with three daughters, and no sons, and he would have played with Lansdowne and De La Salle and Michael’s growing up. So he came from a big rugby house.

“When I hit 9, 10, starting to get a bit more athletic, he brought me up with one of my friends and just said give it a go, and I ended up falling in love with it even though it was daunting going into a team of boys.

“But I think because I had a bit of athleticism, they took me on because I could hold the ball and I could hit, and I stayed with them for a few years, and the girls were the same.

“Then they kind of saw me playing, so Caitlin joined a year later with the younger team. And then by the time Jess played minis, there was a lot more girls involved in the game, so it was easier for her to get involved.”

Rachel continued: “We have similar playing styles, but also we have our own strengths that work alongside each other as well, which is great. There’s no fear if either one of them are outside of me, I know they’ll make the hit, or they’ll get there.

“So you can just be a bit more confident with your own game then because you’re not doubting your inside or outside player. We’ve trained together, we’ve played together for years. We just know each other’s playing styles.

“We almost know what decision they’re going make – if they’re going to carry or pass before they do. So it makes it a bit easier to be there to support.

“We’re our own worst critics, our dad coached us at underage for years at different levels as well. So he’s always given us the good with the bad and the positive and the work-ons, and we kind of just carried that through then to this team.

“We lift each other up when we need to, but we also tell each other what we need to work on, and there’s a bit of slagging done if there’s some silly knock-ons or ‘dive out of the way’ tackles!

We motivate each other on the crap days and the cold days and the bad matches. We keep each other going, and there is that. We’re a competitive family. We’re not playing AIL to just go and play.

“We want to win, and I think that’s probably the next goal, to lift a bit of silverware with the two of them by my side and for us to enjoy that as a family and together.

“We’ll keep going as long as we can, as long as the body allows us to go, to try and reach that next goal for us. And to break that top four would be fabulous, but playing with them and getting there with them would just make it that bit sweeter.”

Of course, the Griffeys are not the only siblings to have played All-Ireland League rugby for Wicklow. During the 2022/23 campaign, their squad included an incredible seven pairs of sisters, including the likes of the Roberts, the McConnells, the Stones, and the Molloys.

Those family links have helped the club to grow considerably over the years through their underage programmes, with their girls teams producing the vast majority of Moreton’s current senior group.

Emphasising how much of a tight-knit bunch they are, Griffey highlighted: “The team is a family, we say it at a lot of the training sessions. We refer to ourselves as a family.

“There are girls that have played, including myself, with some of these girls that I’m going out on the pitch week in and week out for over 15 years together. So you learn about each other on the rugby pitch but also outside of the rugby, and I think that just brings another layer.

“Anyone who puts on a Wicklow jersey is always very proud. But you’re proud to play for those people as well because you know everything going on on and off the pitch. There’s just a lot of pride and a lot of love up in that club and a lot of support from family members who don’t play, siblings, everything like that.

“So it just makes it so special playing for Wicklow. I can’t speak for other clubs, but girls who’ve moved to our team from other clubs say that they’ve never experienced that kind of welcome and that family feeling.”

In their first All-Ireland League season in 2021/22, Wicklow did struggle to adjust to life playing at this level. They finished sixth the following year, and a real sign of their progress was lifting both the Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Conference and Shield trophies.

Injuries impacted the squad last season as they ended up with a seventh place finish, but a strong start this term saw them win their first three games and sit at the top of the table.

Moreton’s charges have come off second best when coming up against the traditional ‘top four’ in the last few rounds – Blackrock College, Old Belvedere, UL Bohs, and Railway. They have back-to-back home fixtures against Ballincollig and Cooke to see out the first half of the season.

Wicklow have certainly learned a lot since making their All-Ireland League debut three years ago, and while they face two teams at the bottom end of the table before Christmas, Griffey says there is no fear of them being complacent.

“Last season we were hit with a number of injuries and also about five of our squad went abroad for the year. So that core group kind of unfortunately fell apart a little bit, and it all happened very close to the start of the season,” she said, as the countdown begins to Saturday’s round 8 tussle with Ballincollig.

“Throughout the season, the results got better and the team settled, but we just couldn’t get back to where we had been the year before, and then this year, because those girls have that chance and that experience to step up and play more and get more minutes under them and some of our injuries and girls have come back from abroad, the team has just got a lot stronger from the pre-season on.

“I think a few of our results we were kicking ourselves for, and I think it goes back sometimes to a little bit of belief. We hear the top four ‘name’, and we start to doubt our own skill and our own ability to get over that line. And I think that’s held us back in one or two of the games that we’ve lost.

“But there’s still a lot of positives to be taken. We lost to Railway 43-5 last time out, and you look back a few seasons ago they beat by over 100 points. The gap is closing. We just need to push on to close it faster. That’s kind of our aim.”

She added: “We need to put in the hard work for the next two games against Ballincollig and Cooke, because they’re not guaranteed wins. They’re extremely up to our level, and we need to show up on the day with our best squads to win those.

“That would be our biggest failing if we do (take teams for granted). And we’ve learned that, I think in the past. There’s been years we’ve gone down to Ballincollig once or twice, and we haven’t gotten off the bus until about 40 minutes into the game.

“We’ve learned our lesson from that. So I think this year we’re a lot more focused on taking every game as it comes, that we have to show up. It doesn’t matter about the opposition, Wicklow need to play the way Wicklow need to play.

“But I think once we get to the Christmas break, our focus now is going to be on that top four spot and the likes of the result against Blackrock. How do we turn them from a seven-point loss to a seven-point lead. So I think we’ll be doing a lot of work over that Christmas break on that.”

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