Tears are already trickling down my face when an arm appears around my shoulders and squeezes. “We’re right here, Rhi.” Aoife gives me a smile, having clearly already read the words blurring in front of my face. She sits on my left, Clíodhna is on my right, and they sandwich against me tightly.
In early June, I was having a pint in The Rusty Anchor in Larne when my phone lit up. After clicking a link to a socialmedia video, the bravest, most beautiful woman in the world appeared on my screen.
My lungs forget how to work. I don’t want to cry in a locker room, but here we are.
She stood in front of every single person she knows and loves most in the world and laid her deepest embarrassment bare.
Dressed in a stunning wedding gown outshone only by her inner beauty, Rhiannon Morrigan was supposed to walk down the aisle and marry her childhood sweetheart. Instead, she stood at the altar and shared how her fiancé, and best friend, betrayed her in the most despicable way.
My stomach twists. That fateful day feels like both a lifetime ago and just yesterday. The bitterness of betrayal in my gut is short lived because, as it turned out, I didn’t need either of them. I haven’t missed them. If I’m truly honest with myself, they were holding me back from discovering who I really want to be in life.
Many people around the world who watched along with me might have felt sorry for her, but all I could think about was how epically strong she was, how courageous she must be to do something that must have been scary, daunting, and humiliating for her. For the eldest daughter of rugby royalty, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, to speak out in a way that was new for all of us to see from a Morrigan.
There it is again. The weight of my name. But it doesn’t crush me this time.
I don’t feel guilt. Or shame. Just air. Finally, air. I stood out from under my father’s shadow and lived to tell the tale. It might have been the first time, but it hasn’t and won’t be the last. Maybe it’s okay to have a different opinion to my father, maybe it’s okay not to toe the family line.
When I first met her, Rhiannon was like a peony bud, guarded, private, beautiful but inaccessible, all her fire lockedbehind fragile layers of control and not only because of who I am and the fact I have written stories about her family before.
But, unlike what many of you may have assumed after having seen a woman show such vulnerability to the world, she wasn’t broken. Even if she may have initially thought she was.
Over the past few months, I’ve watched her change, grow, tentatively explore the boundaries of who she thought she was while trying to figure out the next stage without two people she thought were cornerstones of her life.
While I’m finishing up this article, she’s getting ready to head out to play her first preseason game against Leinster. And she’s preparing for this game like she would if she was stepping out to play in the Six Nations final, or the Rugby World Cup. Every single game comes with the same burden of responsibility for our beloved number ten.
My chest tightens, a fear that he’s about to tell the world I’m a fraud, that I’m not as strong or as capable as they all think I am, rippling through my body. I flinch.
Why do I still not trust him?
I should trust him; I love him, for fuck’s sake. But clearly the echoes of my ex and ex best friend are louder than they should be. I try to ground myself with the reminder that Robert isn’t George, and he’s given me no reason to think he’s about to do me dirty.
Not only that, but every single practice does as well.
For every decision she makes during the game, you don’t see the countless pages of scribbled notes, or the late nights studying the opposition.
For every bad pass, you don’t see the twitch in her fingers like every mistake is a debt she’ll never be able to repay, or the hours of rewatching gameplay to scold herself for not doing better.
For every perfectly ironed game-day kit you see on the pitch, you don’t see her lucky socks with a hole in the heel, or the packet of purple hair ties she replaces before it’s empty.
For every game you see her conducting the team with a pulse of steel, you don’t wonder who catches her when she stops running.
Full body, no fear. And still, she won’t let herself be soft. Not even for a second. Because softness, in her world, is weakness.
On the pitch, she plays like she’s always one step ahead of the breakdown. And maybe she is. But sometimes I wonder what would happen if she let the play fall apart—and let someone stay to rebuild it with her. Instead of taking the weight of the world, the team, her family’s name on her shoulders and feeling like she needs to do it alone.
From peony to fuchsia, our guarded, full of potential bud has grown over the summer, morphing into a bold, dramatic, and unapologetically vibrant beauty. She’s a riot of color in a world that wants her to be beige.
Fuchsia. Bold, unapologetic, impossible to hide.
She’s stepped into the sunshine and is impossible to ignore.
My heart’s racing so fast it surely isn’t healthy, tears are dripping from my chin onto my shirt. I have never felt so fucking seen.
Most athletes play for the logo on their shirt, their team, but the Morrigans, they have an additional layer of expectation. And the weight of the Morrigan name isn’t a light burden to carry.
If I could have any wish for Rhiannon this season, it would be that she plays for herself. Not the name across her shoulders, not the Raven over her heart, but for the goddess she is inside. If she trusts her instincts as she has done all summer, the Ravens will be an unstoppable force in the rugby world.
I’d love her to see what happens if she lets things get messy and to know that I’ll be there to catch her when she stops running.
