When Ireland women's head coach Scott Bemand asked Erin King for a chat earlier this campaign, she'd just played 20 minutes back from a serious injury and was rehabbing inside the IRFU's High Performance Centre. She thought she was in trouble.
"I definitely wasn't expecting it if I'm being honest," King told The Offload's Donncha O'Callaghan and Tommy Bowe in a special episode recorded at the HPC ahead of Ireland's Belfast decider against Wales. "It was very — yeah, it took me by surprise. I was actually only — I had only played 20 minutes back from from injury and I was in here rehabbing and he just asked me, 'I need to talk to you'. So I was really worried. I actually texted Bae and I was like, 'Bae, I don't know — Scott has pulled me for a chat.' What have I done? Think about it. What have I done?"
What she had done was earn a captain's armband at 22, leading what is shaping up as the youngest Ireland Six Nations side in years. "Then he kind of just was like, 'I want to ask you straight out — will you be the captain?'" King said. "I was really taken aback. Obviously I was delighted with it, but yeah, it's such an honour and such a privilege. It already felt like a dream getting to play for this team, but getting to captain them is just kind of beyond my wildest dreams."
King was clear-eyed about how she means to do the job. "I know I won't — I'm not perfect and I won't be perfect probably ever," she said. "And I think that's the whole part of it. Learning on the job and bringing my own style. I wouldn't probably talk the most or be the most technical, but lead by example."
She credits the broader leadership group inside the squad for sharing the load. "We've kind of got this leadership triangle," King said. "I've got two vice captains in Fiona Tuite and Aoife Wafer, who have been like my right-hand woman. They're so helpful at anything I need. So I kind of delegate the workload. And then Eve [Higgins] and Sam Monaghan are also part of that leadership group. So yeah, we really lean on each other and I look to them a lot."
Fellow back Eve Higgins, who was sat alongside King for the interview, used the conversation to reset what this Six Nations has felt like for the inside of the squad. Ireland have already taken on England at Twickenham and France in Clermont this campaign, and travelled to Belfast on the back of bruising losses in both.
"From the World Cup, the momentum that gained, we're really seeing it now," Higgins said. "Playing in Twickenham in front of 77,000 people was incredible. And it's so positive to see the women's game going in that way. It just seems to keep breaking records for crowds."
The Twickenham experience was the moment a number of Higgins's teammates first really felt the women's game's commercial wave. "We had walks during the World Cup, but it wasn't nearly the amount," she said. "And like when you think about us breaking our home record crowds — like genuinely it felt like there was more people there to watch us walk into Twickenham and then have, you know what I mean."
The Stade Marcel-Michelin in Clermont produced a different memory altogether. "In Clermont, it was one of the best atmospheres I've ever played in," Higgins said. "I know myself I was smiling during the French anthem because the crowd just carried on singing it once it was done. The bit where they broke out and they let the music go and they just a cappella — wow, it was amazing."
King's own record game in this campaign came at Galway, where Ireland beat Italy on home soil and the captain bagged a first-half hat-trick. "It felt like my whole family took up the whole grand stand," King said. "With flags, kept seeing faces. It was just such a phenomenal day. The atmosphere was like one of the best I've ever felt for an Irish home game. It just felt like everyone was so involved and it just felt like it was going to be our day even before we stepped onto the pitch."
Her view of where the squad sits with two losses in two big away games is determinedly long-term. "We actually talk about it a lot — like all the experiences that we're gaining at the moment," King said. "Even when we don't win, we're still gaining these experiences that are invaluable. But yeah, our squad is so young, which is such a positive. The end goal is that World Cup in three years' time and that's what we're working towards."
The Belfast decider in front of an Ulster home crowd at Kingspan Stadium and the looming Aviva home test in the autumn are both, in King and Higgins's framing, milestones along a longer road.
"The fact that we're getting to play in the Aviva finally is really exciting as well," Higgins said. "We're trying to keep the fan base going. Through our performances we're trying to do that too. So the onus probably is on us a little bit too. We're obviously disappointed with how that France and England match went. We definitely showed what we're capable of in parts, but it would have been nice to get it over the line in one of them or both of them, just to play in that triangle."
King closed the conversation by pointing at what is happening in the stands. "The people that come to our games are like families and young girls," she said. "You go around, do a pitch walk after, and they're all telling you what club they are and what position they play and how excited they are to be at a women's game. The participation is just skyrocketing and you can really feel that as well. That wasn't something that was there when I was getting my first cap at all. It's grown so much."
Ireland take on Wales in Belfast in the final round of the Women's Six Nations, with King's young captaincy and Bemand's longer 2029 plan both on the line.
