LONG READ Dalton: 'Some girls like to be screaming and shouting, and that works for them. I’m definitely the opposite'

The folding chairs are set out, six feet apart, to the side of the indoor pitch at Ireland’s High Performance Centre. The 2026 Guinness Women’s Six Nations is rapidly approaching and the squad are well into ‘Media Day’.

TV and radio are up the wing, with scribes taking their seats and being met by their requested players and coaches. In one corner, official photographs are being taken, and videos that will be used for social media, b-rolls and cutaways. On the far side of the pitch, stash is arranged across three long tables – training tops, shorts, fleeces, socks and more. Near the gym, a few players rest phones against the wall to record their own content.

Aoife Dalton heads over and takes a seat. Both knees patched up with large plasters. Scott Bemand and his fellow coaches have been putting the players through their paces. Dalton bears some of her cuts and bruises from Celtic Challenge action. She led her Wolfhounds side to a comprehensive 50-29 victory over the Clovers, Ireland’s other team in the Welsh-Scottish-Irish competition.

“We were just so busy with that,” she admitted, “we didn’t even realise how close the Six Nations was getting. Now, all of a sudden, it’s here.”

Dalton is still only 22 but this will be her fourth Women’s Six Nations campaign. Her demeanour is quiet and assured, but there is a steeliness to the Leinster centre. From an early age, she was chosen to lead teams. The first pictures that Irish photo agency Sportsfile have of Dalton tell a short tale. In the first, back in April 2018, she is smiling with one eyebrow raised as she holds an Under-16 trophy aloft. Her Tullamore RFC teammates are going buck mad, just behind.

In the next, one year on, she just about reaches the shoulder of a rival captain as she poses, at Croke Park, for Junior B Final snaps. Her team won that Gaelic Football final, too.

My dad was heartbroken, then, but I wouldn’t say he minds it, now. He gets to go to the likes of Parma and Twickenham.

“I played GAA with Clara up until I was 19, then I got offered a contract with Ireland,” the Offaly native explained. “You can’t really play any other sports when you’re under contract. My dad was heartbroken, then, but I wouldn’t say he minds it, now. He gets to go to the likes of Parma and Twickenham.

“I loved GAA. It was definitely my first sport. It was my number one, until I got contracted up here. My family were big into it – my dad and my brother. It was a huge part of how I grew up, and it still is a big part of it, now, when I go home.”

Dalton’s father, Tony is chairperson of Clara GAA. She has three younger brothers with one of them, Marcus playing with the local club and on the Offaly senior football panel.

“I started in the back-line, and was centre-back. I then moved to forward and played between the two positions. I think I’d have to play with the backs, if I ever went back to GAA. I was terrible in front of goal!”

Some of Dalton’s good friends are still involved with Clara and keep track of her exploits with Leinster, the Wolfhounds and Ireland. “It is quite a tight-knit community,” she explained “Very small, and everybody knows each other.”

Mention of Clara brings Irish golfer Shane Lowry to mind. I asked Dalton if she was part of the massive homecoming celebrations for Lowry, in 2019, after he won The Open Championship at Royal Portrush.

“Ah, jeez,” she remarked, “everyone was out for that. There was like 20,000 there. I remember when he won his first Irish Open, when he was still an amateur [in 2009], and everyone back home was screaming at the telly!

“Shane is pretty much a celebrity – to be able to win The Open is just crazy. He’s a great clubman with Clara, though. He’s so humble, every time he comes back. My dad is good friends with his dad, Brendan. He’s a big GAA man, too. They coach together, for Marcus’ team. They’re just normal people. They don’t treat anybody any differently. Just really down-to-earth.”

For much of her formative years, Dalton was aiming to represent her club at senior level, and have a crack at playing county. She was heading into secondary school, though, when rugby entered the picture. “Tullamore had an U15s team and needed people to play for them,” Dalton explained. “My brother played for the club, and did GAA too, so my dad was like, ‘She can give it a go. She’ll be grand’. I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t actually know any of the rules. But I loved it, straight away.

I loved rugby, and slowly learned the rules. Even when I first came into the Leinster set-up, I was still learning a lot of them. I realised I was still a ways off.

“Most of the other girls wouldn’t have even been from Tullamore. They were from all the surrounding areas. It’s quite a small club, but the catchment area is so big. I loved it from the get-go, and I made loads of good friends. I had only really played GAA, up to that point. I had played a bit of soccer, but didn’t like that. I loved rugby, and slowly learned the rules. Even when I first came into the Leinster set-up, I was still learning a lot of them. I realised I was still a ways off.”

“Tullamore is fantastic,” she added of the club that also gave Ireland international Cormac Izuchukwu his first taste of rugby. “It’s like a little gem in The Midlands. So many stars have come out of it; Nichola Fryday, Jordan Conroy, Megan Burns is with the Sevens. So many internationals out of such a small club. I owe so much to them.”

After getting a taste for the game, her first immersion in a rugby event was following the 2017 British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand. It is not lost on Dalton that the Black Ferns will host the inaugural British & Irish Lions Women tour, next year.

“It’s well deserved for the women’s game,” she stated, “especially with how far it has come. After the experiences of the last World Cup, having a Lions tour to look forward to is so exciting.”

Dalton was juggling GAA and rugby commitments until a successful inter-provincial run with Leinster U18s, in 2021, tilted the board.

“There are so many from this (Ireland) group on that Leinster team,” she pointed out. “Me, Erin King, Dannah O’Brien, Ruth Campbell, Vicky Elmes Kinlan, Aoife Wafer. After that, a few of us got asked to go into Sevens. I wasn’t offered a contract, then, but was asked to go in and train.

“I didn’t really know where it was going to go, and was thinking ‘this could go one of two ways’. After that, I was asked to go into a 15s screening camp for the Japan tour. I went to that and was asked if I could go on that tour. It was a bit like, ‘Oh, Jesus’. It wasn’t ever really what I was expecting, to get that opportunity.

“I was very lucky, at that time, because they were looking at younger players to develop and I just fell on my feet, that way. Around that time, with the Sevens training and the screening camp, was when I thought, ‘I really, really want to do this’.”

The older players tried to put on a brave face but there was so much going on in the background that we were, kind of, hidden away from.

Dalton made her senior Ireland debut in a 57-22 win over Japan, breaking through the home defence to score her first try, at the end of the first half. Two months after completing her Leaving Cert exams, at school, Dalton was an Ireland international.

Her first year with the senior side was tumultuous. December 2021 had seen 56 former and current Ireland players putting their names to a letter, sent to the Irish government, stating they had ‘lost all trust and confidence in the IRFU’. Positive changes were afoot by the time the likes of Dalton, Dannah O’Brien and Aoife Wafer stepped into the senior squad. Nonetheless, there were prolonged periods of hardship and a Six Nations ‘Wooden Spoon’, just three years ago.

“It was definitely tough,” Dalton recalled, “especially that 2023 Six Nations. That was my first Six Nations, and it was so difficult. The older players tried to put on a brave face but there was so much going on in the background that we were, kind of, hidden away from. We knew we were at the start of something, in terms of being centrally contracted, and we just had to bide our time and know that, if we put everything into it, things would get better. Thankfully, it did.

“I’ll never forget that Six Nations. I remember, after that, thinking, ‘I’ll never play for Ireland again. That’s me done!’ But those senior players – the likes of Nichola and Sam Monaghan – are such huge role models for me. To see how far we’ve come is really nice and hopefully we can go even further, now.”

Dalton switched over to Sevens and represented her country at the 2024 Olympics, then rejoined the XVs squad for a run to second at WXV 1, in Vancouver. She followed that up, in 2025, by being named in the Six Nations Team of the Tournament, and winning Ireland Women’s Players’ Player of the Year award. “I definitely don’t chase individual awards,” she insisted.

“I’ll never go after that side of things. For me, I just want to win that starting jersey and try be my best self, for the girls around me. It is very humbling, though, to be recognised. The extra special ones are when it is your teammates voting for you. To be honest, I don’t really care what broadcasters or pundits think of me. It’s more what the girls that I’m playing with think.”

“Some girls like to be screaming and shouting, and that works for them. I’m definitely the opposite.

There is a calmness to Dalton that sometimes does not tally with the dynamic, abrasive centre we see rollicking about for province and country. “Some girls like to be screaming and shouting, and that works for them,” she said. “I’m definitely the opposite. I’m quite a relaxed person, and I try to stick with that, on game days. I’m very conscious that I don’t want to burn any unnecessary energy, going into games. I definitely get the best out of myself when I’m very relaxed. I’m not a very competitive person, away from rugby, but I definitely am, when I go out to train and play. It just naturally comes out of me.

“Whatever my first involvement is, I try to make it a positive one. That, obviously, doesn’t work all the time so, when that happens, you have to move on pretty quickly. I can also take the confidence, heading into games, from the fact that I’ve done everything I need to be in a position to go after things. Go attack it. That is how I approach games. I definitely don’t need to be banging off the walls.”

Away from rugby, Dalton is nearing the end of a radiography degree, at University College Dublin. “I just have a couple weeks of placement left, and I’ll be done,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It has been challenging, at times, just to balance everything. You feel much better once you can see the finish line. I’m nearly scared to say I’m finishing it soon, just in case something goes wrong and I can’t do it. I’d be delighted, though, to get through it.

“We walked out to the pitch and it was like, oh my God. The noise was just deafening. We couldn’t even hear anyone in the warm-up.

“I did my first two years at Beaumont Hospital and I’ve been at St. Vincent’s for the past two and a half years. They’ve been so good to me. Marie, in there, is a God-send. She has taught me how to love the work, as well. You can start to resent it, after a while, especially when you are trying to balance that work and study with rugby. They don’t really care what I have going on, and I can see where they are coming from. They’re like, ‘You have to do this if you want to become a radiographer’. Marie has supported me so much, though, and has taught me so much about the profession.”

Saturday will see more than 75,000 rugby supporters file into Allianz Stadium for the 2026 Six Nations opener, with Ireland facing title-holders and reigning World Cup champions, England. Dalton can still recall how initially “daunting” it felt, back in 2024, to play at Stade Marie-Marvingt, in front of 16,000 fans, to face France.

“We walked out to the pitch and it was like, oh my God. The noise was just deafening. We couldn’t even hear anyone in the warm-up.

“I feel like you just have to take it in and use that sense of occasion to your advantage, in a way. The stadium was amazing but, at the start, I was just like, ‘Jesus, what is going on here?’ More than anything, though, it’s really exciting.”

Following that tournament opener, Ireland’s home games will be played in Galway, Belfast and Dublin. “It’s such an amazing opportunity,” Dalton declared, “to get to play at Dexcom Stadium, go up to Belfast and then, for our last game, the first ever standalone Women’s Test match at the Aviva Stadium. That’s so cool.

“I definitely didn’t think something as big as this would come around so quickly. For that to be so close, now, is exciting, especially after seeing how many Irish were coming to our World Cup matches. That first World Cup game against Japan was special. There were about 18,000 there, and it felt like nearly everyone was Irish. It was incredible. If we were able to get crowds like that here, it would be the best ever.”