Anna McGann: 'I didn’t know if rugby was going to be it for me'

Anna McGann and Eve Higgins were not the first Irish players – male or female – to while away down-time by recording funny videos for social media. So far, though, they have made the biggest impact.

The friends and teammates are two of the most recognisable faces in the Ireland squad. That, in a large part, that has been achieved by tapping ‘record’ and letting fans and followers in on some behind-the-scenes fun.

Their TikTok videos, during last year’s World Cup, led to Canterbury ‘releasing the fleece’ and putting a piece of leisurewear, meant for the players, on general sale. When they did, the fleeces flew off the shelves.

“Eve and I have shared a lot of our journeys together,” McGann said. “We were both in the Sevens programme from around the same time – she came in a few months after me.

“We’re more siblings than we are best friends because we just get on so well, we’re both so close to each other’s families.

“When we started sharing our friendship, just making TikToks and stuff online, we never, ever thought people would start watching them and reacting so well. So we fell into that. That was pure accidental.

“I guess what we learned was that we have the power to game, outside of just playing rugby, as well. Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t take it too deep either. We still just do it for the craic.

“If we get the views, we get the views but, yeah, it’s more just showing our personalities. Having the platforms to do that has been good craic, so we’re going to continue to do it as much as we can, have fun with it and we’ll see where it takes us.”

As Ireland coach Scott Bemand seeks to deepen his squad, and bring new faces into the fold, McGann and Higgins have been used as big-impact replacements for much of this Championship. The Athlone native, who came into the 15s set-up after an excellent showing with Ireland Sevens, scored a hat-trick against Italy in last year’s Guinness Women’s Six Nations and grabbed a try, off the bench, in her side’s opening round loss to England in April.

Growing up in Moydrum, McGann did dream of playing for Ireland. In hockey.

“For me,” she explained, “it was every sport under the sun. It was mainly hockey, when I was in secondary school. My dad suggested going down to try rugby, to make me fitter and stronger for hockey.

“So, I went down to my local club, Buccaneers, and I just loved it. The people down there were so lovely and Dad could see that it was bringing out a different side to me, as well. I was quite a shy and introverted kid, so it was bringing out a side that he could see was benefiting my career. So, I stuck with that and still was playing hockey.

“I then got scouted for Sevens (in 2016). That was the turning point in my career where I was going to go hell for leather with rugby and seeing where it took me. I haven’t looked back, since.”

During a run-out with her Buccaneers teammates, McGann caught the eye of a Connacht scout. He then contacted Sevens coaches Stan McDowall and Anthony Eddy and, McGann remarks, said, ‘Here, this girl can run fast! Give her a shot.’

“Two weeks later, I was playing for Ireland in an Under 18s tournament in Vichy, France. I did well and, off the back of that, they offered me a senior contract. They could see the potential in me, as a rugby player. I probably couldn’t… no, I definitely couldn’t, at the time. I didn’t know if rugby was going to be it for me, but I decided to go with it.”

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McGann’s parents, Mick and Terry, feature prominently in her sporting journey. When hockey looked the likelier route, in her final years of secondary school, they would to take turns driving McGann from Athlone to Dublin for club games. Unfortunately, as McGann’s rugby career started to take off, her family received some awful news.

“Dad had cancer for about three and a half years,” McGann said. “He was only given six months, initially, so the fact that we had him for those three years meant so much. They were probably the most crucial three years of my 15s career, and years that I didn’t think he’d be there to see, or be part of.

“I still remember my first cap in the RDS, after we played Wales in the 2022 Six Nations. He got to be there and got to see the result of all the hard work that not only I put in, but that of my family, who had helped me to get there. It was really special moment for him to be able to see that, and be part of it.”

At one point, Mick paused his chemotherapy treatments to fly to the South of France and surprise his daughter in Toulouse, where she was playing on the HSBC SVNS Series. After that priceless hug with his daughter, he headed for a few drinks with Higgins’ family, who promised they would look after him.

“He was my best friend,” McGann said. “He is the reason I got to where I am today, and I would constantly reference him because he was a huge part of my life and always will be. He got to see me win my first 15s cap, the progress from there. He would have known he had helped me make the right choice and stick with rugby.”

The 27-year-old sports several tattoos on her arms. Some, she explains, are just for fun while others have deeper meaning. On her left arm, at the crook of her elbow, is her father’s signature.

“This was taken from the last note Dad wrote me, while he could still write,” she explained. “He came to stay with me, before we went to one of the Ireland men’s games. He had to do some work and I live really close (to Aviva Stadium). He had to jump onto a call, so he came to the house and logged on.

“He was using my desk, so he wrote me a note on the corner of a piece of paper that he had torn off. I found that note, around six months before he passed, and kept it. I thought, ‘I’m going to keep this forever’. After he passed, I decided I would get some of that note tattooed. That’s probably my favourite one.

“I’ve also got tattoos of my parents’ birth years and another special one was when we got to the Olympics, with the Sevens team, we all got bee tattoos. We had this metaphor – we were in this beehive and we’re all going to block out the external noise. When we qualified, and all went for it.”

“Our families are such a crucial part in us being able to do what we do. It’s not just what you have to sacrifice, it’s that they’re so understanding. They know what we have to give up and when we can’t be there for them, when they’re there for us.

“My sister, Sarah had a baby, a few months ago, and she brought her to my game, three weeks after giving birth, which is incredible. She never ceases to amaze me. Same goes for my mother and my brothers. I couldn’t ask for a better family, honestly.”

Mention of qualifying for the Paris Olympics in 2024 is a loaded topic for the Connacht wing. In May 2023, the Irish women’s side defeated Fiji, in Toulouse, to book their tickets for Paris 2024. Four weeks after that euphoric high, McGann ruptured the Anterior Cruciate Ligament in her knee. That was just the beginning.

“Around four days after surgery,” she recalls, “I slipped and fell on the tiles, at home. I had to go back in for another surgery, for them to clean up all the damage I’d done. It was really bad. I can look back and laugh now but it is stuff like that – when you’re coming back from your ACL, you’re learning how to walk again.

“When people think of injuries, I don’t think they actually think of the mundane details. The three or four weeks, you’re relearning how to walk, to relearn how to run. You really are stripping it back to the basics. That can be really hard, mentally, when you’ve gone from the highest level of your sport, to learning how to walk again.

“Then you have to try get back to where you were, before. I would have struggled a little bit. My ACL journey wasn’t straightforward. It wasn’t like a nice nine months and I was back. It was just under a year, and I had two or three setbacks in that time.

“The struggle was more like, were you can’t actually picture yourself back on the pitch with the girls, because of the mental block. Then you have the fear of redoing it and injuring it again. These are all the things you have to work through, before you even get back on the pitch. So, you’re physically on the pitch when you might not mentally be.

“That’s what I probably struggled with the most because, obviously, I was in a race against time to try and get back to the Olympics. I only made it back with two weeks to go before selection. I managed to be selected as a travelling reserve, which was still big. I was back somewhat close to that previous level, but I knew I wasn’t back to my best. It probably took another six months before I was.”

Early on that comeback trail, in August 2023, Mick McGann passed away. Looking back now, his daughter was grateful that being sidelined from her injury, and at home with family gave her more time with him. These are the small mercies we sometimes cling to.

McGann missed out on Ireland’s superb showing at WXV 1, in late 2024, but returned to feature in the 2025 Guinness Women’s Six Nations, running in that hat-trick against Italy. She scored twice against Canada in a Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 warm-up, later that year, and registered another double, in the tournament, against Spain.

She will be looking to add to that tally in the final round at the Aviva Stadium against Scotland, which has surpassed 28,000 in ticket sales.

It’s worth noting that the previous record attendance for an Ireland women’s Test match was only set on Saturday 18 April, when 9,206 filed into Dexcom Stadium, in Galway, to see Scott Bemand’s side beat Italy 57-20. Women’s rugby – as we have seen across the Championship – is attracting traditional supporters, as well as rugby-curious folks and a swathe of newcomers.

McGann – whether it is through her TikToks, the ‘Coffee Snobs’ series, design brand ‘Chaos The Label’, or that willingness to show followers what life as a rugby player is really like – is helping to reach these new audiences.

“We always tap into different level of fan, a different cohort, when we put stuff on social media. Even at the World Cup, there were some people coming to games because of the TikTok stuff, not because of the rugby. There is a level of it in women’s rugby, where the fans are a bit different to men’s rugby.

“The men may have never had to do this [social media videos and skits] as they’ve always had the publicity, and they’re able to fill stadiums. But it does put a little bit of pressure on us to be like, ‘If we do this, we’re growing the game’. We are doing it for the craic, though. It’s more about opening people’s eyes to women’s rugby, whether they are rugby fans or not. We have the opportunity to do that as social media has grown so much. We see it as only a positive, really.”

“I really feel in the last year that there’s been a turning point in my life,” McGann added. “We’ve gotten more people on board, people are actually backing us now and we’re filling stadiums. The next two years as well will be so important for women’s rugby, not just in Ireland but globally.

“You have the Lions tour and all these big events. It is a really exciting time for women’s rugby. You can really feel it. All of the girls here feel, it as well. That’s what makes it so exciting. We still have to put out performances and earn the right to have those full stadiums. We know that, and there’s pressure with that, but pressure is privilege. We’re in a privileged position so people just go you can take it and keep going with it.”