FIONA Coghlan has ruled out a move into coaching, following her retirement from international and club rugby.
The 33-year-old Clontarf native steps down after 13 years and 85 caps as one of Ireland’s most successful rugby captains, following a World Cup tournament that has further raised the profile of the sport for women.
Speaking to The Irish Post this afternoon, she said: “My body is probably in the best shape it’s ever been in. It’s more the time commitment. Your life is put on hold and you don’t have time for anything else.
“With coaching it’s the same thing. It’s a huge time commitment and that’s why I’m stepping away from playing.
“So, at the moment I’m not going to coach, but I will give something back to the game, I owe it to the sport.”
Coghlan and the rest of the Ireland team were greeted by fans at Dublin Airport on Monday, as they returned from the World Cup in fourth place, their highest ever achievement in the tournament.
The women arrived home after three weeks in France to the sound of Ireland's Call, an experience that the former captain found overwhelming.
“We were blown away by the fact that there were people there, we didn’t expect that as we were expecting to come home with a trophy,” she said.
“At the business end of the competition we didn’t perform against England and then threw the match away against France.
“There was a huge media frenzy over here after we beat the All Blacks, which we were aware of from social media, but we were blown away by the turn out yesterday.”
Ireland claimed a historic victory over New Zealand, who had not lost a World Cup game since a defeat to the United States in 1991, but they fell short against England in the semi-final.
Coghlan admitted that whilst the team returned home having achieved their goal of reaching the top four, their premature exit from the tournament is still hard to swallow.
“We didn’t perform on the day, things didn’t click. I don’t know what went wrong,” she said.
“It’s still a bit raw. When I look at the tournament in the future I’ll look back on it as a very successful tournament for Irish rugby, but as an athlete competing in this it’s still raw.
“We should have put the France game to bed and finished with a third sport and we didn’t, that probably hurts me more than our performance against England.”
