IT’S a Friday morning when Anna Caplice takes the phone call. The former Munster, Richmond, Harlequins, Gloucester-Hartpury, La Rochelle and Ireland flanker is currently on a trip to Sitges, the coastal town in Catalonia, for a friend’s wedding.
That sounds like Caplice alright. The Mallow native is a born adventurer, the most recent being a three-month coaching stint with the Laos national team. A country which is currently 103rd in the global rankings, they were on the lookout for a head coach to oversee the Sevens programme for the men’s and women’s teams.
Caplice takes up the story.
‘My intention was to retire from club rugby and then have a year of playing in all of the invitational stuff in places like Hong Kong and Dubai, all the fun stuff. But because I got a concussion last year, which I’m still recovering from, I can’t play anymore.
‘I’ve known for a long time that I’m going to go into coaching naturally, but I was supposed to be going to California to play in a 10s tournament, but because I couldn’t play, I was looking for an opportunity to distract myself, so I volunteered for Child Fund Rugby.
‘It’s a charity that works very closely with World Rugby and developing rugby nations. I volunteered to translate French at a global summit that they were having last summer, just before the Women’s World Cup.
Flanker Anna Caplice played for Harlequins
‘They were looking for a coach, and my name came up, and they said, “oh yeah, we know Anna” from the time that I spent with translating French for them, and they said we need a coach for three months, just a short-term thing, so I took it.
‘It was an unbelievable experience, people would raise their eyebrows now thinking about Laos rugby. It used to be a French colony so there would have been a lot of clubs back in the day, but that has changed a lot now. It’s a lot of local players and home-grown coaches, so the game understanding isn’t massive, but the athleticism is there, and their eagerness to learn and to play is there.’
Suffice to say, there were plenty of challenges in the gig.
‘We played against Thailand, Philippines, Singapore,’ says Caplice.
‘They are all very beefed out by expat players, that maybe play in Australia or grew up in England or whatever. In Thailand, they have got military connections, so they have a lot of guys that are in the military, coming across to play.
‘There was a lot of questions around, “oh right, you’re a woman coaching the men’s team”. I think in Asia in general, in a lot of businesses, traditionally they were always very male spaces, so I think there was a lot of question marks around, did the men mind that they had a female coach kind of a thing?
‘But in Laos in rugby, there’s a lot of women involved, a lot of women in leadership there, so they’d be kind of used to seeing that anyway, and then it’s just a question of kind of getting on with it.
‘So there’s loads of work to be done, so if anyone has a problem with being coached by a woman, then they don’t have much time to think about it because training is starting at this time, and you’ve got to be there, and just being really prepared and getting stuck in.’
Still, it must have been a culture shock to move halfway around the world to a new country?
‘I don’t really suffer from culture shock,’ says Caplice, who retired from international rugby in 2022 having won 16 caps for Ireland
‘I’ve been traveling since college. I studied languages, and I spent time in Argentina, in Vienna. I played a season in Australia. I spent a summer in Canada. I’ve played in Spain, played in France, I’ve travelled loads, languages is a big thing for me, and I love other cultures.
Caplice was up at the crack of dawn to make a trek to the Nam Xay viewpoint in Vang Vieng
‘My time playing with Ireland really pinned me down to living in Ireland and the UK, when, actually, I would have liked to have lived somewhere where I could have spoken a foreign language, but the opportunity to play with Ireland obviously came first.’
One of the first things the Cork woman was given upon her arrival in Laos was a small Suzuki motorbike to navigate the busy city streets. One morning, Caplice was up at the crack of dawn to make a trek to the iconic Nam Xay viewpoint in Vang Vieng. It was certainly worth the trip.
‘I had to get up at like 4am and drive a rented moped out to the mountains. It’s so liberating. It was such a nice feeling.
‘I met a lot of French travellers. It was really cool, to tell them, that I was the national team coach. They were like, “what, oh my god”. If I was traveling, in somewhere kind of random, I’d love to meet the national team coach, if I was out hiking, or anything like that, so that was really cool to actually tell people, what my job was, at that time. It’s a gorgeous country.
‘I was feeling sorry for myself that I was going to be spending Christmas so far away from home,’ she recalls. ‘I had to ask for time off over Christmas, because they don’t celebrate it. it’s just a regular week for them.
‘I went up north of Laos, and went travelling, and I was delighted with myself. In the end, I took a hot air balloon on Christmas Day, which I wanted to do for years. That was my Christmas present to myself.’
Before she moved into the coaching game, Caplice was a teak-tough backrower with a fearsome reputation on the field. She rose through the youth ranks in Cork, quickly caught the eye of the Munster selectors and was first capped by Ireland in 2016.
There followed a long spell playing top-level rugby in England, something she combined with a postgraduate in modern foreign languages at St Mary’s University in Twickenham. She can speak French, German and Spanish.
Anna Caplice takes a selfie with Ireland team-mates in 2021
Always up for a challenge, Caplice even agreed to take part in Ultimate Hell Week – The Professionals in 2021. The hit RTE show where contestants are put through a gruelling military bootcamp by former members of the Army Ranger Wing was not for the faint hearted. Caplice was part of an 18-strong group featuring Stephanie Roche, Peter Stringer, Andrew Trimble, Eamon McGee and Valerie Mulcahy.
‘It was awful! I have awful memories of it. It was actually horrendous,’ she says, looking back on the experience.
‘The reason I got asked on it was because I hadn’t been selected for the Six Nations. Mentally, I was in a dire place. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it at all.
‘I was the first girl to come out of it, which I’ll never get over. However, it was really helpful to find that group at that time. There was a lot of interesting, wonderful people who shared the experience.
‘The experience itself was terrible. I hated it! I was only there for two days and I had nightmares for months after. That’s how bad it was. However bad it seemed on TV, it was a million times worse.
‘I can always say I jumped out of a helicopter though!’
After a brilliant career, Caplice hung up her boots last year. She had spent a few seasons with La Rochelle, but a worrying spell of concussion put an end to that chapter on the Atlantic Coast.
‘I still have to manage it. It’s over a year now and I still have to do exercises every day. I have to wear my glasses all the time. It’s still something that I have to manage, but it’s fine. It has improved.
‘I’m working with a very good concussion specialist. It’s not a linear process. It’s very much a rollercoaster recovery.
‘You might be feeling good and then it’ll go backwards. It’s up and down all the time but I just have to keep the faith that it will get better.’
Getting to spend the final few years of her playing career at Stade Marcel Deflandre was an unforgettable experience. Ronan O’Gara put the town on the map by guiding the men’s club to back-to-back Champions Cup triumphs in 2023 and 2024.
Anna Caplice played for the Barbarians and Ireland
‘I would always describe it as if Munster was based only from Mallow,’ Caplice explains. ‘That’s what it felt like. They’re so connected to the team. Every coffee shop. Everyone’s talking about them.
‘You could talk to anybody about rugby. It such a rugby town.
‘It was such a gorgeous place to live. The cost of living, isn’t as high as in Ireland. I could live independently there. I could rent an apartment on my own. I couldn’t even do that in Mallow!’
Punditry is another string to Caplice’s bow. She was a regular on co-commentary duties throughout last year’s Rugby World Cup on English soil.
The 36-year-old will be riding shotgun in the commentary booth ahead of the Women’s Six Nations, too. She’s enjoying the challenge of it. She’s a regular guest on Off The Ball and she’s writing columns for a number of other media outlets.
Ireland have a daunting challenge ahead of them next weekend. Scott Bemand’s squad will pitch up at Twickenham, which is heading for a sellout, to take on the newly-crowned world champions on their home turf.
Few will give the visitors any chance of derailing a team which has won seven straight championship titles, but Caplice believes that Ireland may surprise a few people next week.
‘England weren’t actually outstanding in the run-up to the final,’ she says.
‘I think they played their best game in the final (against Canada).
‘There could be an element of them struggling to bring that all together on the field. Now, they do turn up in the Six Nations and especially in Twickenham in front of the home crowd. I think anyone would be foolish to think that England aren’t going to turn up in their top form, but I do think that the gap is closing.’
Flanker Caplice in action for Ireland
Week one could be a rough experience for an Irish team which has made steady improvements in recent times. Bemand’s troops have finished third in the last two Six Nations. They are looking to go one better this time around, especially after they pushed the French all the way in that pulsating World Cup quarter-final loss at a rain-sodden Sandy Park last year.
This talented group, with the likes of Erin King, Aoife Wafer, Eve Higgins and Anna McGann on board, could make some waves in this championship. A Women’s Six Nations which will conclude with a historic standalone fixture at Aviva Stadium in the final round.
‘If we reflect back to the men’s Six Nations and how we all felt after round one and then compare that to how we felt at the end of the tournament,’ says Caplice.
‘It will be a massive challenge, but it’s not going to tell the story of the tournament.
‘The support that’s there for the girls now, I would have given anything to have had that, to have been there full-time and putting in the work full-time.
‘I think that all of the former players should be happy in the fact that they contributed to getting it to where it is as well.’
As for Caplice, she’s putting away the passport for now.
‘I’ve nothing pencilled in,’ she adds.
‘I’m focusing on a bit of co-commentary for this Six Nations and I’m doing a bit of writing. I’m looking for my next coaching role, but I think it’s a good time to spend some time back in Ireland.
‘I’ll stick around at home for a while. Who knows.’
It won’t be long before that travel bug bites again, however. There will be plenty more adventures down the track.
It’s just the way that Caplice is wired.
