The Front Row Union Sport - Club Women: Old Belvedere Return to Rugby

Club Women: Old Belvedere Return to Rugby

Sep 11, 2020

—

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.

We caught up with our latest Club Members Old Belvedere last week as they prepared to return to rugby for the coming season.

It’s been a difficult time for most clubs as they adapt to the Covid-19 restrictions but the Dublin side have been working hard behind the scenes to get their preparations on track and it was good to see a large turnout of players as we pulled up at Ollie Campbell Park.

The club have been busy off the field during the summer with a shake up of their coaching team seeing the introduction of Johnny Garth as head coach, with Nora Stapleton continuing as assistant coach and Ailis Mardon-Egan returning.

Garth, who was a member of St Mary’s College Senior Men’s coaching team for four years, winning an AIL title in 2012, stated on his appointment: [su_quote]

I am delighted to be appointed as the Women’s Senior Coach for the upcoming season. Old Belvedere RFC has a long and proud tradition in women’s rugby, and I very much look forward to getting started with such a talented and exciting squad.[/su_quote]

We caught up with Old Belvedere and Ireland’s Linda Djougang who was one of our star players for Ireland before the Six Nations was postponed due to Covid. As an athletic, ball playing, front row Linda certainly made an impression in her first international season with some hugely impressive stats in metres made and tackles completed. She also caught the eye of several international photography judging panels with this picture, by our photographer Bob Given, of Linda in action during her debut against Wales, in November 2019, picking up several Gold Medal awards around the world.

“Driven Over” by Bob Given

*Linda Djougang, Ireland v Wales, Belfield Bowl, UCD, Dublin*

Linda, who works as a nurse, switched her focus to a front line role in the fight against the pandemic but, after six tough months, it’s some relief to get “outdoor active” again and continue her impressive rugby career.

Belvo will have to hit the ground running as they compete in, what should be, a tough Community Series with the Leinster Conference featuring five AIL sides but Linda is looking forward to the challenges ahead.

We also caught up with longtime FRU Favourite Jenny Murphy who appreciates the role rugby has to play as the population looks to get back to some form of normality.

Jenny, who starred for Ireland in the centre during their 2013 Six Nations Grand Slam has latterly been playing in the back row for her club.

Jenny Murphy

*Ireland Women secure their first ever Triple Crown in a hard fought 3 – 30 win against Scotland at Lasswade RFC.*

With the new coaching set up at Belvo and Jenny still, in our opinion, one of Ireland’s most abrasive centres we asked if she will be switching back to midfield in the coming season.

With our interviews completed we hung around to get some photos of the pre season training, and it was good to see quite a few of the Leinster U18’s squad working with the senior players at Belvo.

The pictures from the training session are below.