The Front Row Union Sport - Women: Miller shines in Marbella.

Women: Miller shines in Marbella.

Jun 17, 2013

—

We are currently carrying out a necessary behind-the-scenes upgrade to how images are stored and delivered on The Front Row Union Sports. With over 770,000 images on the site, we are moving our entire image library to a dedicated cloud storage service. This means images will load faster for you, regardless of where you are in the world, and the site will be more reliable overall.

As we are working on three separate versions of images during the offload process, the site cache sometimes struggles to keep up with which version to display and occasionally post grid images or complete galleries may fail to appear. This is a temporary side effect of the migration process — the image exists and is safe, it is simply in the process of being moved to its new home and identified as being there. A refresh of the page will usually bring them back, however, if it does not please contact john@thefrontrowunion.com stating clearly the post address and we will restore it as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and appreciate your patience.

We expect the bulk of the image migration to be completed by the end of June 2026, with a fully upgraded version of the site ready to launch in August 2026. Once that work is done, the site will be noticeably faster, images will load more reliably, and you will not see any further disruption of this kind. Thank you for your continued support of The Front Row Union Sports.

Connacht’s Allison Miller shone in the Marbella sun, bagging five tries, in one of Ireland Women’s best performances in an International 7’s tournament to date.

Despite not winning a trophy this time round Ireland showed an dramatic improvement in their performance qualifying for the main Cup Semi Finals for the first time, finishing fourth overall in the 12 team Women’s European Grand Prix.

A strong first day laid the foundations for Ireland’s success with Ireland winning three out of their four matches. In fact the competition got of to the best of starts with a comprehensive 31 – 5 win against Scotland. Allison Miller opened the scoring and further tries came from Jenny Murphy, Sophie Spence, Claire Molloy, Claire Keohane and Amy Davis with Keohane adding two conversions in the six try romp.

Ireland went on to beat Portugal 19 – 0 in their second match with Keohane adding a try and two conversions to her personal tally alongside tries from Lynne Cantwell and Molloy before a narrow 10 – 7 defeat to France with Niamh Briggs the only Irish scorer with a try and conversion.

Any disappointment was quickly forgotten with a 19 – 0 win against England with Ireland pleased to keep their rivals scoreless. Ireland’s tries came from Miller, Cantwell and Spence with Keohane adding a conversion in their final match of Day 1.

The Girls in Green kicked off Day 2 with a 24- 12 victory against Germany, Miller adding a late brace after tries from Davis and Molloy, Murphy converting two, to secure their spot in the Cup Semi Final after finishing second in their group.

The Semi Final saw Ireland face the undefeated Russia and the eventual champions went on to record a 27 – 5 win with Miller the only scorer for Ireland and the competition ended on a disappointing note with a 14 – 7 defeat to Spain in the 3rd place play off. Ireland’s scores came from a Cantwell try and a Baxter conversion.

Despite the play off defeats Relaid will be pleased to have taken some big scalps in this competition with wins against Portugal and England particularly pleasing. With the squad featuring 10 of the Grand Slam winning team congratulations must go to National Team coach Philip Doyle, backs coach Greg McWilliams and special mention to Strength and Conditioning Coach Ross Callaghan who laid an impressive foundation for 7’s coach Jon Skurr to build on.

The girls now travel to Moscow at the end of the month for the real test of the 2013 Rugby World Cup Sevens.

Ireland: Jenny Murphy, Claire Molloy, Niamh Briggs, Larissa Muldoon, Claire Keohane, Lynne Cantwell, Alison Miller, Shannon Houston, Amy Davis, Ashleigh Baxter, Laura O’Mahoney, Sophie Spence.