Fiona Hayes: 'It was just unbelievable to be in the Aviva'

March 8, 2014. Most people watching rugby in Dublin 12 years ago have one dominant memory – that giant banner of Brian O’Driscoll’s face floating around the Aviva Stadium. Ireland said goodbye to one of its most famous sons as BOD played last home game in green.

Shortly after the send-off for number 13, another group of Irish players ran out for the first time at Lansdowne Road. The IRFU organised a double header, the men’s Six Nations match against Italy followed by the women’s clash against the same opposition.

Officially, 6,000 of the capacity 52,000 crowd hung around for the second act. But by the time the women mopped up an emphatic 39-0 victory of their own, plenty had filtered out towards the bars of Ballsbridge, Baggot Street and beyond.

Fiona Hayes, a replacement prop on the bench for Ireland 12 years ago, says it felt more like a significantly smaller crowd by the time players embraced supporters at the end of the second match. Nonetheless, the memories are positive.

“For me, the first thing that comes into my head is, they put your name on that big board when they go through numbers, announcing one to 23 before the match,” Hayes recalled.

“Your name comes up on that big board, and the 300, 400, however many were there, are cheering. That was the first time I experienced something like that, in a stadium that big to see people cheering for us. It was unbelievable.”

That day remains the first and only time Ireland have played a women’s match at the Aviva Stadium. Until Sunday. Over 30,000 are expected to take in a standalone Guinness Women’s Six Nations clash against Scotland.

Such a figure comfortably breaks the attendance record for a home Ireland women’s international. Yet to catch up to the feats of crowd building at Allianz Stadium, the previous record for a match on Irish home soil was 9,206, set when Italy travelled to the redeveloped Dexcom Stadium in Galway earlier this year.

Sunday will be a threefold increase on the record. This after the figure rose from 6,113 in 2022 to 6,605 in 2024 to 7,754 last year. Steady progress followed by the mother of all jumps as this side finally gets a chance to swap the Dexcom, RDS, Ravenhill and Musgrave Park for Irish Rugby’s HQ.

The move to the Aviva 12 years ago was well-intentioned but inadvertently doomed to second billing. Good luck topping O’Driscoll. Not that being an undercard presence rather than the main event tainted things for those involved.

“It didn’t even enter our heads,” Hayes said. “It was just unbelievable to be in the Aviva and experience such a stadium.”

The day before the match, Ireland went through the Aviva changing rooms during their captain’s run. That was the last they’d see of them, the very fact there was a men’s match meaning there was no room at the inn.

The women had to change at Lansdowne Rugby Club next door, walking from the clubhouse down the tunnel to the stadium that is normally reserved for the bus dropping players off pre-match.

“When we were going back out on the pitch at half-time, we saw three Italian girls quickly finishing their cigarettes,” Hayes laughed. “We were literally outside the stadium when going for the half-time team talks, so they could get away with it. Very different these days with high performance sport!”

There is a sense that Ireland’s historic day at the Aviva came just too early. Later that year they beat the Black Ferns at the World Cup.

“We would have felt media and people got on board after we beat the Black Ferns to get to the semi-final against England,” Hayes remembered. “That’s when we felt we started getting bigger. This was just pre that.

 

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“The Aviva is still one of my best memories. The real excitement came when we did the team run, we were allowed take a few pictures and walk the pitch beforehand. I work Monday to Friday so this was my moment where I felt like I could imagine doing this as a job. It was an unbelievable feeling even when no one was in the stadium. Seeing those seats, the grass so perfect, to play where we see the men play was fantastic.”

Hayes also points to the effect a date at Lansdowne Road had on the players in the build-up.

“Even though there wasn’t a huge crowd, everyone stood up,” she says. “The week before it in camp, people wanted a jersey.

“It added fiestiness to training. Yes, we had a fair idea of who was playing, but there was a chance to go after each other to get on the team sheet. To go on at the Aviva was in the back of everyone’s mind that week.

“When they announced it, it was a relief being on the bench for Fi Coughlan. A core memory is how the feeling switched from ‘yay, we get to play at the Aviva’ to, ‘hold on, get a jersey and be part of this history’.”

With the sizeable difference in crowd on Sunday compared to 2014, not to mention home dates with England and France in next year’s Women’s Six Nations, you suspect that for both Irish players involved this weekend and those that miss out, the wait to add more Aviva memories this time won’t be so long.