For Queen’s University, this is not simply another knockout tie or a date in the diary. It is the culmination of years spent rebuilding, reimagining, and refusing to let their momentum slip when circumstances might easily have swallowed them.
They have weathered thin squads, long winters, painful exits, and seasons where progress could only be measured in inches. Now, for the first time in the Belfast club’s history, they have reached the semi-final stage of the Energia Women’s All-Ireland Junior Cup.
Competing hard on the national stage, Queen’s face MU Barnhall, a team chasing their fourth successive title, and do so not as a novelty, not as lucky qualifiers or plucky students, but as a club that has rebuilt itself brick by brick, season by season, year by year.
No one embodies that more than full-back Alexandra McIlwaine. Eleven seasons in the same jersey. Not just a University team, it is a club that means a lot to her.
She stayed, not because it was easy, but because she lived through the years when Queen’s very nearly fell apart, and believed there was something worth fighting for.
“I think it’s really important because I think we get lumped with kind of being called a University squad and that’s kind of all we are,” she told IrishRugby.ie, speaking ahead of Sunday’s semi-final at Parsonstown (kick-off 2pm).
“People think that you just go there and you play whilst you are at uni for a bit of fun and a bit of craic. But I think we’re here to prove that we are a sustainable club and we’re ready to push on.
“We’re not just a stepping stone club. We’re one of those clubs that we’re pushing on each season. We don’t want to have just one phenomenal season.
“We want to continue and have a sustainable club and, you know, constant players that are wanting to stay and have a retaining sort of culture.
“So, I think being pushed into this semi-final of the Energia Women’s Junior Cup shows people that we are ready to make our mark and we aren’t just the University side.”
The idea of sustainability, of building something lasting, threads through every part of the Queen’s story. It is not what University clubs are supposed to be, yet Queen’s have made it their mission.
It was not always like this. The memory of those harder, thinner years is still vivid for the players who stayed. McIlwaine arrived in 2014, full of energy, ambition, and that wide-eyed excitement that comes with starting University and discovering a sport that feels like it belongs to you.
She almost quit rugby in her first year. Year two was worse. What had been a decent squad suddenly collapsed. People graduated, people left, people drifted away.
Queen’s were thin on numbers one season and turned up to matches with 10 against 15. These were years that broke most University clubs, but strangely, this was the moment that Queen’s started to change.
“I started at Queen’s in 2014 so this will be my 11th season with the club. I started rugby, my sister played at school, it was only Tag rugby at school and then I somehow fell into like an Ulster Under-16s kind of contact thing and I just really really loved it.
“Then when I went to University and that’s when I really picked it up. I decided I was really going to give this a go, went to Queen’s and honestly in my first year I almost didn’t go back because there was just, the culture wasn’t there.
“It wasn’t really a great club to play for, and then my second year we had that mass exodus of players and there were only eight players but that was where I met all my best friends.
“Like, those eight players I’m still friends with pretty much all of them, and we kind of built the club brick by brick from 2015 to where we are now, so it’s been a decade of building.”
Brick by brick. Not glamorous, not easy, but steady. There is a group of players who have lived through it all, a backbone forged in scarcity. That loyalty laid the foundation.
The trophies that followed, including Ulster Women’s Junior Cup titles (the last of which was won last March), were the outward signs of an internal culture solidifying.
There’s a core group, sort of us that all started together in and around the same sort of time, sort of 2014, 2015, 2016. There’s a core group of us that are pushing on being at the club for about a decade now.
“We wouldn’t still be here if this club didn’t offer something special, if it didn’t offer genuine training, genuine coaches, and good standards. I wouldn’t still be here if that wasn’t the case.
“That’s the second time we’ve won it (the Ulster Junior Cup). But I would say it’s not even just stemming from that. I would say it’s stemmed from the fact that we’ve built our club brick by brick.
“We couldn’t field properly each weekend (all those years ago), but now we have a really strong first team and a really successful second team.”
Speaking about Sunday’s eagerly-awaited clash with reigning champions Barnhall, the only winners of the Energia Women’s Junior Cup to date, she said: “I think it’s a good thing.
“We’re going to be playing someone that hopefully we’re a similar standard to. We’re going into this with a bit of fight in our bellies and we’re not scared to play against them.”
There was a time when Queen’s were scared or at least overwhelmed. Their last meeting with Barnhall came in the last-eight of this competition during the inaugural season back in March 2023. Queen’s lost that quarter-final, 32-0, at Dub Lane.
This time it is different, though. This is no small shift. It is a mark of growth, psychological as much as structural. Queen’s have worked on their game and are ready to put up a fight.
“I’d say back in the day when we did play them last, there was that fear element. We felt like we were being pushed against this huge Irish side that nobody had ever heard of, that they were going to absolutely annihilate us.
“Whereas I think we’re going into this knowing we have a real fighting chance with it. I think there’s definitely the element that we’re going into it as the underdogs.
“I think people are sort of looking at Barnhall as the favourites, but I think that we as a club, we’re very, very resilient, and I think we’re pushing on and we’re not going down there with our tail between our legs.
“We’re ready to put up a fight and ready to show them that we’re made of something. I think this is probably the strongest squad we’ve ever had in the years that I’ve been there, so I think if there is a year for us to do it, it’s this year.”
If McIlwaine represents the club’s past and its long path to this point, captain Aoife Redmond is part of its newest chapter. A leader forged in a different system, who arrived three years ago and found something she did not expect.
If McIlwaine’s story is one of endurance, Redmond’s is one of rediscovery. She grew up in Tullamore, playing mini rugby, then U-12s, U-16s, U-18s, rising through the Leinster pathway.
Rugby was foundational, until it wasn’t. While the sport faded away for a time, rugby, in the way it often does, found her again at Queen’s.
Redmond reflected: “I’m from Tullamore originally. I came up through the system down in Leinster and then took a couple of years’ break, tried hockey up here, didn’t like it and found love for rugby again and just been at it since. My third year with Queen’s and yeah, loving it.
“I’ve just finished my degree in Children’s Nursing, so I was saying before like a lot of my course is placement, half placement, half class, and so trying to balance that with rugby was really, really difficult for me.
“I found a love for it again, I had taken a couple of years sabbatical during Covid and that was really difficult, but the girls have just been amazing and so welcoming.
“Coming up to the University, I did come into it thinking it is a University team but we’re so much more than that and we’ve really shown that to other clubs and for them just not to write us off.
“We have commitment, players commit to it full-time, 100%, and that’s something we also preach that if you’re coming into the squad you’re committing and it’s a full-time club.”
Her captaincy emerged naturally. A bit older than some, her experience shone through. Supported by vice-captain Rebecca Mann, who captained the team last season, and back-line stalwart McIlwaine, she has embraced the role.
“It’s definitely a new experience. I’ve not really been a captain of a rugby team before, but I think as it’s my third year here at Queen’s and I’m a small bit older than a couple of the girls, they kind of would come to me and look to me for a small bit of advice or experience or knowledge.
“I have Alexandra by my side and my vice-captain Rebecca Mann. Ollie (Millar) and Colm (Finnegan) have just been amazing and kind of supporting me on and off the field and my decisions, and it’s just trust and confidence in myself that I have to build up.
“Having the girls and such a strong pack around me, with all the Ulster girls coming back in, it’s something I’ve really built on.
“Taking their knowledge on board and experience in my own game, being able to bring on girls is something I’m really, really proud that I’m able to do, and the girls would look to me for a lot of experience and help along the way.”
With the coaching team reinforcing standards and Ulster players returning, the Queen’s environment shifted again. Sharper, more structured, more ambitious, and it has showed, crucially, at All-Ireland Junior Cup level.
They made a statement in last month’s quarter-finals, beating Creggs 44-5 away from home. A hat-trick from Molly Swanson (pictured above), along with a Ciara Fitzsimons brace and tries from Anna Dawson, Sarah Roberts, and Maebh Clenaghan, did the damage.
“I think we’ve nearly outgrown our own league at this stage,” Redmond admits. “Going down and beating Creggs with that scoreline, it 100% shows we’re up there.
“Even the game against Tullow a couple of years ago, we were up there with them as well, we had a couple of injuries at the time of the year.
“I think it definitely shows that we’re up there and we’re definitely able to compete and compete well, compete and lose by only a couple of points, or put it up to them and win, like we did down at Creggs.
“I think we can definitely perform this weekend and show everyone that Ulster is not to be looked over and that we’re a good team. We can definitely put it up to them.”
However, preparations have not been ideal. Queen’s league schedule collapsed into walkovers and long gaps. They returned with a 46-5 win over Ballynahinch on Tuesday evening, with their last match prior to that coming at the start of the month.
While they have had little to no competitive action in the Ulster Premiership, where they sit second in phase 1, they have trained with relentless intensity. With upwards of 40 players at sessions, they simulated match conditions internally, replicating pressure, tempo, and physicality.
“Our last game before Tuesday was Enniskillen. We were unfortunate to lose that just by a couple of points in the dying minutes, we were up by a couple of points and they just got a try in the last couple of minutes.
“I know them and Malone, who we have (in) two weeks now again, will be our top competitors in our league. We had a couple of walkovers, it’s difficult to not have had a game until this week, not the best coming up to the semi-final but we’ve been training really hard, S&C, and they’re just building on that.
“We’ve great numbers of training up to like 40 players, so you are putting a team against each other, and high-intensity two hour trainings most nights.
“Having not played kind of an 80-minute game in a while was difficult. We had to show ourselves as a team 100% but also not just a team, not just something to look over, it was not a training match. It was a match that we needed to win and win well to prepare for the weekend.”
The players feel it, the weight of history, the possibility, the groundswell of belief and support. For Redmond, the Tullamore girl now calling Queen’s her rugby home, there is an added twist. She knows Barnhall well. The rivalry is personal.
“Ciara Faulkner, who is actually injured at the minute, she was my 10 at Tullamore, and then Michelle Gorman, one of their props, I would have played with her as well.
“Tullamore and Barnhall would have a long history there, got a few hard matches, so really excited to be playing them again.”
The prestigious University in Belfast has a long standing history with the sport. The Queen’s Men’s team play in Division 1B of the Energia All-Ireland League, a badge of honour in Ulster club rugby. “We bring home more silverware than they do,” McIlwaine laughs.
Excited, not intimidated. That distinction matters, because the Queen’s Women’s team are not the side they were three years ago, or five years ago, or ten.
They are not the team that travelled without the numbers to field a full selection. They are not the team that feared Barnhall. They are not the team surviving semester to semester.
They have rebuilt themselves the slow way, the hard way, the only way that lasts. A semi-final is more than a milestone, it is the culmination of a decade-long defiance of expectations.
It is a challenge to the old perception of University rugby. It is a statement, Queen’s are not just here for the craic. They are not just here for a few years. They are not just a stepping stone.
They have carved out something lasting, and now, on the most important weekend in their history, they get the chance to prove it to the rest of Irish club rugby. In truth they already have, long before the result arrives. The rest is just the next brick.
“I think it’s a massive moment for the club. I think a lot of people back then, you could have bet them your entire bank account and they wouldn’t have said that we would make it this far.
“I’d say there’s still a lot of people out there who kind of say that Queen’s are, you know, that underdog club that can’t really do very much.
“We’re pushing on and I think this is the game where we make our mark and we show them that we can compete at that level. We’re ready to push on, especially if we go out there and stick to our structure and our discipline that we’ve been working on for the past five years.
“We were unfortunate when we got into an All-Ireland League play-off there a few years ago and we just couldn’t do it, but I think this is again, as I say, this is the strongest squad we’ve ever had.
“We’ve got a really, really good coaching set-up, we’ve got two strong teams, we’ve got S&C coaches in this year. I think this is the best set-up we’ve ever had within Queen’s University,” added Redmond.
– Additional photos provided by Chrissie McKee/CM Sports Photography
