{"id":47734,"date":"2025-09-06T18:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T18:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/47734\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T18:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T18:18:09","slug":"meet-the-man-who-brought-womens-rugby-to-wexford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/47734\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the man who brought women\u2019s rugby to Wexford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Noel Ferguson worked for Leinster Rugby, promoting the game in Wexford for nearly 20 years. As Ireland take on New Zealand on Sunday, he speaks about the journey the game has been on\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Noel Ferguson of Wexford Wanderers. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/3ea5c5d8-9b8c-416c-833e-127ef6a63acf.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Noel Ferguson of Wexford Wanderers. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The trajectory of women\u2019s rugby in Ireland is absolutely remarkable. Ireland\u2019s men played their first international test against England at the Oval in 1875. It would be well over a century, not until 1993, that Ireland\u2019s women played their first match. Folklore has it that the team were only introduced to each other on the staircase of the Edinburgh guesthouse they were staying in the night before the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Twenty years later, Ireland won an historic Grand Slam, finished fourth in the 2014 Rugby World Cup a year later, before winning another Six Nations Championship in 2015. But in 2021, dozens of current and former players signed a damming letter which was sent to then Sport Minister Catherine Martin, informing her that they had \u201clost all trust and confidence in the IRFU and its leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noel Ferguson worked for Leinster Rugby, promoting the game in Wexford for nearly 20 years. As Ireland take&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[4247,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-47734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-cillian-boggan","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}