'Donnacha helps me a lot. ROG has been so open to me'

The 42

21-04-2025

IT'S 10AM AND the sun is beaming down on the old market in La Rochelle, the beautiful French town Anna Caplice has called home for the last two seasons.
Munster, the Mallow woman's beloved province, are in town but Caplice is wearing Stade Rochelais colours. She still loves Munster but the locals have been good to her. When you win a national championship, the French hail you as one of their own.
Peter O'Mahony and a few other Munster players stroll past after a morning coffee. The lads at the next table ask about getting out to Stade Marcel Deflandre later. A few other supporters who recognise Caplice stop for a quick hello.
She's the local tour guide for everyone this weekend, her social media post on La Rochelle having teed thousands of them up for where to go.
It's already 17°C. The sky is clear blue. On the table is black coffee, fresh bread and butter.
35-year-old Caplice is talking about the great times she has had in rugby. She has played in Limerick, London, Argentina, and Austria, earned 16 caps in the back row for Ireland, and loves life in France. Now coaching in La Rochelle, benefitting from Ronan O'Gara and Donnacha Ryan's encouragement, she has good times ahead in the game she loves.
And yet, Caplice pauses as tears fill her eyes. She has had bad news recently. Her playing career is most likely over.
'I have a concussion,' she says. 'A bad one that isn't going away.'
She first took a blow to the head from a team-mate's knee against Perpignan in January. Two weeks later, she was back training and got a relatively innocuous shoulder to the head, with the same results.
'Dizziness is kind of the best word to use,' says Caplice of her ongoing symptoms.
She's taking medication and getting glasses in a bid to resolve the issues. There is still hope she will make a full recovery but the timeline means it is likely to be after Stade Rochelais' season has ended. This is due to be her last campaign as a player.
Caplice helped La Rochelle to the Élite 2 Féminine title last year.
The concussion means Caplice can't have a drink, a slight annoyance with a group of her friends over for the game, but the feelings caused by being denied the chance to finish playing on her own terms are severe.
'I don't feel like the best is ahead of me, I feel like it's already happened,' says Caplice when it's naively suggested that coaching might give her even better experiences.
'But that's kind of normal maybe, because I'm still just in that grieving process.
'Even sitting here now, I have this like urge to run with the ball… Oh God, I feel like crying.
'That feeling of just carrying the ball. I love it so much.'
Caplice fell for rugby when she was 12. Munster were on their painful journey towards the Holy Grail. Her dad used to bring her brother to games and she remembers the jealousy whenever she was left at home.
They could only get two tickets for the 2004 Heineken Cup semi-final against Wasps. She remembers crying and crying. Her diary entry:
This is so unfair.
It felt a little like that in terms of chances to play. Caplice's brother played rugby with Mallow but there was no girls' team. She did everything with her brother as a kid but was too embarrassed to ask about rugby.
She thought she'd have to wait until college but when she was in fifth year in school, an announcement came over the tannoy from the principal. Girls' rugby training tonight at 7.30pm in Mallow Town Park.
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'The whole class turned around and looked at me,' says Caplice.
50 girls turned up. Many didn't return but there were enough for a team. 17-year-old Caplice was hooked from the very first minute.
'I was in the shower after training, covered in muck, roaring the Fields of Athenry, and I didn't even realize I was doing it,' says Caplice.
'But there was something that happened to me that night that… yeah, it changed my life.'
Caplice supporting Munster against Castres last December. Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
After school, she moved to Limerick for college and joined UL Bohemians, who had an academy that included women's players. Caplice took up a degree in languages at the University of Limerick, focusing on Spanish, German, and Japanese.
The course involved a placement teaching English in a rural town in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina. There was no women's team at the local rugby club and Caplice, 21 at the time, was pointed towards the hockey club when she turned up at training. She ended up playing with the men's U18s and loved her time in Argentinian rugby.
'We trained from 9pm to 11pm and we'd have our post-training meal at midnight, a big barbecue at a long table every Thursday.
'I was the only girl there and I was like a queen because they're so chivalrous and were taking care of me because I was young and I was the visitor.
'We'd stay there until 2am and everyone goes to work then on Friday morning. They're late birds, the Argentinians, but I was suffering.
'Amazing, amazing experiences that I always hold so close and remind myself, that's why you love rugby.'
Caplice would love to go back to Argentina to coach, all the more so given that they don't have official women's 15s rugby caps there. It's something she would like to see change.
She had another college placement in Vienna the following year and rugby was prominent in that experience too.
Caplice ended up being part of the Austrian women's squad, training with them and playing in a few non-capped games. She wasn't eligible and had huge ambitions of playing for Ireland anyway, but it kept her skills ticking over.
Nonetheless, Caplice recognises that going away those times probably delayed her Ireland debut until she won her first 15s cap against Canada in 2016. Caplice had already debuted for the Ireland 7s in 2013.
By the time she won her first Ireland 15s cap, she had moved to the UK, studying a post-grad in modern languages and playing for Richmond, with whom she won the Premiership in 2015.
She had a short stint in Japan at one stage, and though it wasn't for her at the time, she'd like to try it again in the future.
Caplice on her Ireland debut against Canada in 2016. Donall Farmer / INPHO Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO
Caplice was part of Ireland's World Cup squad in 2017 and had some impressive performances in green, particularly in the 2020 Six Nations, but ultimately looks back on her international career with mixed emotions.
She's thrilled to see the set-up thriving now after serious investment from the IRFU but it's hard not to wish these things had been happening when she was involved.
Caplice was one of the 62 Irish women's rugby players who wrote to the Irish government in 2021 to express their loss of all trust and confidence in the IRFU. Caplice never featured for Ireland again.
'I still feel maybe a bit of resentment that the bad times happened during my time,' says Caplice.
'When my window was open, things were unravelling or had unravelled and I feel sad about that for a number of reasons. It took me a long time to get into the Irish squad and there was kind of juggling between 7s and 15, and I got caught in that.
'It was just really bad timing for all of us. I have 16 caps and that number will haunt me forever. I was in camp for years and selection so often went against me and I'm still trying to figure out why that was.'
After being left out of the Six Nations squad in 2022, Caplice announced her international retirement and says she couldn't watch them play for a long time because the anthems made her sad.
'I'm really glad that that little revolution happened while I was still in a jersey because from the minute I got into an Irish jersey, I was saying things like, 'Hang on, this isn't right' about many different things and not just one person or one way of doing things, but a lot of things just didn't make sense to me.
'So I hope that whatever happens and as good as these girls are getting now, that if a young player is in there, she's playing well, she's confident, that if she doesn't feel like something is right, that she can say, 'Hang on a second.''
Caplice played for Harlequins from 2019 until 2021 and also with Gloucester-Hartpury in 2022, while a fortnight with the Barbarians goes down as 'two of the best weeks of my life.'
Her wanderlust took over again after retiring from international rugby.
Caplice managed to squeeze in half a season of playing rugby in A Coruña in Spain, as well as a summer playing full-time rugby with Sydney's Eastern Suburbs in Australia.
Caplice in La Rochelle colours.
They landed and headed straight for the old market, where they had a few early drinks in a bar owned by a fella named Raf. He told them to come back for Ireland's Six Nations game against France the day after. One of the Stade Rochelais women's coaches happened to be there too.
The next day, before they flew home, Stade Rochelais sent a minibus to pick them up and bring them to one of the women's team games. Caplice kept in touch and when they asked her to come over as a player/coach for the 2023/24 season, the timing felt right.
Stade Rochelais play in Élite 2 Féminine, the second tier, and Caplice helped them to win the title in her first season, sparking glorious celebrations. The locals were fiercely proud.
'I was cycling my bike the next day out by the stadium and just this random man started singing a song like on the phone singing about, 'She's a champion of France, She's a champion of France!''
Caplice teaches English in the business school in La Rochelle on top of rugby.
While her playing days may be at an end, Caplice has enjoyed kicking on with coaching, working with young female and male players in Stade Rochelais.
She has been taking a French coaching course that will allow her to get paid for her work there. Caplice's focus has been on defence and communication, the latter an area which she believes should be coached more given how important it is to rugby.
Her compatriots, Ronan O'Gara and Donnacha Ryan, have been good to Caplice.
'I talk to Donnacha a lot, he helps me a lot with advice on my coaching course because he's gone through that,' says Caplice.
'ROG has been so open to me, like, 'Come out and watch training any time you want and ask whatever you want.''
Caplice loves how integrated the women's team are in Stade Rochelais, getting use of the club's excellent facilities and being made to truly feel like a bit part of the family. The women's team get offered tickets for all the men's sold-out games at Stade Marcel Deflandre and Caplice's coaching career is thoroughly supported.
She's not sure what next season will bring. Caplice has connections everywhere. She even had an offer come coach the Indian U18 girls. Having the French language and her French coaching qualification is very useful and she can see herself back in France.
Despite the grieving process that's happening now, La Rochelle has been good to her.
'I feel like La Rochelle is like what it would be like if Munster was based solely from Mallow,' says Caplice.
The chat winds up with a long sun-soaked day ahead. Whatever happens next, Caplice's team will win.