Archive December 29, 2025

The year 2025 was one that asked plenty of questions of Andy Farrell’s Ireland team. Will 2026 provide the answers?

Throughout their tortured World Cup history and failed efforts to reach that first semi-final, the team has been accused of all too frequently peaking at the midway point of the four-year-cycle.

Nobody, though, will be making that claim this time around.

In 2024, Ireland still won the Six Nations, with the magnitude of that achievement not lost on anyone old enough to remember the 24-year wait for such a title between 1985 and 2009.

However, there was undeniably a lingering concern over how they left a Grand Slam behind them with defeat by England in Twickenham.

A split series in South Africa that summer was, again, not a poor return in isolation but with hindsight it feels increasingly important that the manner of the loss was decidedly more emphatic than that of the win.

Their November campaign began with a muddled performance against the All Blacks and it felt as if the side never truly regained their rhythm.

The same, perhaps, could be said of 2025 as a whole.

Opening with a pair of Six Nations wins over England and Scotland augured well, but they were decisively beaten by France at home either side of laboured away wins over Wales and Italy.

A summer tour without the sizeable contingent of both players and coaches who were with the British and Irish Lions in Australia offered little insight or measure of progress.

Losses against New Zealand and South Africa when back to a full complement in November only heightened the fear that, having slipped from their 2023 peak, the gap is widening between Ireland and the very best.

Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of those home defeats by France and South Africa was how Ireland felt simply overpowered by both, in contact and – against the latter especially – at the scrum.

The nature of those losses has only heightened concerns over the squad’s age-profile.

Fifteen of the players called up by Farrell for November are the other side of 30-years-old, while a further four will be by the time of the 2027 World Cup.

Munster forwards Edwin Edogbo and Brian Gleeson, as well as Ulster centre Jude Postlethwaite, are all uncapped and would offer both new blood and physicality come the 2026 Six Nations.

Leinster props Paddy McCarthy and Tom Clarkson, and the fit-again Ulster lock Cormac Izuchukwu, already have international experience but greater exposure for the trio would also fit the profile for a campaign that feels a tipping point in the build-up to Australia 2027.

Ireland are not prone to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, though.

Will Farrell freshen up a largely settled matchday squad with such promising but untested players or continue to rely upon those possessing such credit in the bank with a coach who will mark a decade on the Irish ticket in 2026?

How some of those experienced campaigners shift what has felt like a Lions hangover is an intriguing subplot.

There is more to it, however, than simply personnel.

Given the physical profile of their squad even through what has been a golden era across the past decade and a half, Ireland have become used to having to box clever to enjoy their historic successes.

But, while lengthy phase-play was once their calling card, changing interpretations of the defensive breakdown have rendered that part of their game as less effective than before.

If Farrell’s side are looking to garner some momentum in the build-up to a World Cup, 2026 will see the Ireland women seeking to harness the impetus generated from their own global showpiece.

Ireland’s rebuild from the nadir of their World Cup qualifying failure in 2021 really took flight in 2024, when a third-place finish in the Six Nations ensured promotion to the top-tier of WXV.

Once there, they showed they belonged with the best by beating New Zealand in Vancouver. Another third place in the 2025 Six Nations did not feel quite the achievement of the past year, especially given the campaign ended with a gut-punch defeat by Scotland in Edinburgh.

Having missed out on the previous World Cup, their showings in England were considered around par with wins over Japan and Spain, but a pool-stage defeat by the Black Ferns and subsequent quarter-final loss to France.

On another day they could have battled past Les Bleus in horrible conditions at Sandy Park but instead missed out on the becoming the first Irish senior side to win a last-eight tie at the tournament despite holding a 13-0 lead.

Off the field, however, the World Cup represented a real reconnection between the team and the Irish public.

From viral social media videos to the ‘release the fleece’ campaign, an engaging squad achieved real cut through even in non-rugby circles with interest around games seeming to mushroom in tandem.

It is already confirmed that 2026 will bring a historic standalone fixture at the Aviva Stadium when Scotland are in Dublin for the final round of the Six Nations in May.

With Italy in Galway and Wales in Belfast before that, Scott Bemand’s side will surely be targeting a three-win campaign for the first time since 2020.

A restructured WXV competition with a first Test window starting in the autumn provides a new challenge too.

How Ireland’s top players are prepared for those campaigns will continue to be of keen interest in the early months of 2026.

For home-based players, the Celtic Challenge continues to be used as a way to get ready for the Six Nations, although it will be hoped between now and March to see more competitive matches than in recent iterations of the championship.

Increasingly, though, there is a real Irish presence in the Premiership Women’s Rugby too. Star back row Aoife Wafer made her Harlequins bow this month, while key forwards Brittany Hogan and Niamh O’Dowd will debut for Sale and Gloucester-Hartpury in the new year.

Warning: This article contains themes that may be troubling to some readers.

“They didn’t even give him a chance,” he said. More than 20 or 25 shots were fired at him.

One of our early friends was with them, but he couldn’t say anything. So he only saw our friend die right in front of his eyes, and that’s it.

The fact that Sudanese forward John Mano recounts the passing of his best friend Medo is at odds with his intensely burned-out expression.

In addition to the more than 150, 000 people killed during the country’s civil war, which started in April 2023, Medo is one of them.

Mano, who made his debut for the nation’s team just months before the conflict began, claims that Medo had traveled to Wadi Halfa, a city close to Egypt’s border, to arrange travel documentation to avoid the country during what the UN describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The 24-year-old, who spoke at the Moroccan team’s hotel during the ongoing 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon), tells BBC Sport Africa, “I think they forgot some certificates.”

He had to go back because it was so crucial to the family. He went home and took everything.

More than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of Sudan’s army’s power struggle and a paramilitary group’s (RSF)-spread-wide famine and reports of genocide in the western Darfur region.

Unsurprisingly, football has sat in the backseat. The league has been suspended while stadiums have been destroyed.

Al Hilal and Al Merrikh, two of the nation’s biggest club sides, have both spent the last season in the top flight of Rwanda.

We don’t have a league, we don’t have anything, but because people in my country can’t eat, they don’t have food, Mano says.

Sudan has reached the finals for the fourth time since 1976 despite all the difficulties, including having to play their home Afcon qualifying games in neutral nations.

Kwesi Appiah, the head coach of Ghana, has had to persuade players to compete without any guarantees of payment and has offered consolation on “several occasions” when squad members have lost family members.

The 65-year-old, who took over in September 2023, says, “We try to let players know, even though they’re gone,] they’re looking at you and what you can do for the nation.”

To ensure that the player returns to himself, I should give him at least two or three days off.

Some of the players have not returned from a long trip, and many have the opportunity to join a new club in another country.

Mano has relocated to Libya after joining Al Ahly and then Al Akhdar, along with other members of the Falcons of Jediane squad.

The former Al Hilal man, however, did not make it out of Sudan before receiving his own death threat.

He explains that the rebels used to halt us and make fun of us while we were traveling.

They would say things like, “You play for Al Hilal, what is Al Hilal?” Al Merrikh is my support. Nobody will ever ask me why I can kill you right now.

Bakhit Khamis, the team’s captain, and Appiah say a part of their role has been instilling a sense of family among them.

Left-back Khamis, who also plays in Libya, says that football is the only source of relief for the Sudanese people.

It is the only thing that can bring us joy and ease our pain and suffering from the war.

You cannot avoid feeling at ease because of the unity that develops within you. Sudan has become more important than anything else in our quest for strength.

One of the best things to happen to us is “this unity.” It brought us together as one people.

Appiah inspires his team to a memorable home win over Ghana in 1982, the country he won as a player and later managed twice, by motivating them to feel like they can be “the best in the world” with the right attitude.

After the game, a delegation of ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates made contact with the squad and discovered Sudanese soldiers celebrating the victory.

They “put their guns down,” Appiah says, “hoping that the war will end completely so that” everyone can return home peacefully.”

You never know, in my opinion, if we can win the Afcon by grace.

Mano describes football as a “weapon” to fight for my country, despite the soldiers’ best efforts to end their firearms.

He has promised to the fans in their home country that Morocco will be the year’s only champions in the 1970s.

You are aware that some of the fans (the fans) are unable to watch the game. They can’t hear, even on the radio.

“Every day, people are dying,” the statement read.