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Beyond Performance with Gráinne Finnegan

As part of our Transition Thursday series, we speak with Gráinne Finnegan as the Six Nations kicks into the second round. As Rugby Players Ireland’s Player Development Manager for the Women’s programme, we explore how players are supported during this time.

Gráinne, with W6N underway, what does your role look like day-to-day within the HPC, and how does that shift during a competitive window?

During a Six Nations window, my role becomes more responsive and attuned to players’ immediate needs. Much of the foundational work is done in the lead-in, which allows me to operate more adaptively during camp.

Day-to-day, my role centres around regular check-ins with players across the system; not just those in the Six Nations squad, but also those rehabbing or operating outside of camp. It’s about maintaining connection, understanding where individuals are at, and ensuring they feel supported.

In the women’s game, this is particularly nuanced. Many players are balancing dual careers and external demands, so a key focus is managing allostatic load. This is the cumulative physiological and psychological stress placed on their system. If that load is too high, it can impact recovery, emotional regulation, and decision-making.

My role is to help mitigate that load by providing tools, creating space and supporting players to navigate both the visible and invisible demands they carry, so they can sustain, not just reach, performance.

Your work sits outside of on-field performance, so how would you describe ‘player development’ in this context, and what are the key areas you support the players with?  

Player development, is about supporting the whole person behind the player. Performance doesn’t exist in isolation, it’s influenced by mindset, wellbeing, identity, and life outside of rugby.

In-season, a main focus is on player welfare especially in a high-pressure environment like Six Nations. I also support players with career planning and identity beyond sport, which is particularly important in the women’s game where professional structures are still evolving.

Recently, I facilitated a breathwork and yin yoga session within the Six Nations camp. That was about giving players practical tools to down-regulate their nervous systems, improve recovery, and create moments of stillness in an otherwise high-intensity environment. It also fosters connection, both within themselves and with each other, which is a key part overall wellbeing.

Can you talk us through your own  pathway, and how your experiences shape the way you support the players?

My pathway into this role has been shaped less by a traditional performance route and more by a depth of experience in wellbeing, human development, and high-pressure environments.

Professionally, I’ve worked extensively in supporting individuals and teams navigating stress and burnout. That includes coaching staff teams through burnout and managing a family support team within Tusla, where I was working with complex needs, often high-stress systems that required a strong understanding of emotional regulation, resilience, and interpersonal dynamics.

Alongside that, I’ve completed Level 9 postgraduate training with University College Cork in trauma, attachment, and resilience, as well as specialist study in Elite Athlete Wellbeing Management. Those frameworks are central to how I understand performance, not just as output, but as something deeply influenced by an individual’s internal world, relationships, and capacity to regulate under pressure.

While I also bring a background in wellbeing practices such as yoga and breathwork, it’s this integration of evidence-based psychological theory and real-world experience that shapes how I support players. I approach development through a trauma-informed and systems-aware lens, recognising that each athlete is operating within multiple demands, both within and beyond rugby.

Ultimately, my role is to create conditions where players feel supported, understood, and resourced, not just to perform, but to sustain that performance in a healthy and meaningful way.

How do you balance supporting players’ needs while they’re fully immersed in their rugby?

For me, it starts with meeting players at a human level, recognising them as individuals first, rather than solely through the lens of performance. That relational foundation is essential, because it creates the psychological safety required for honest conversations and meaningful support.

From there, I take a holistic approach to player welfare, understanding that performance is shaped by an interplay of psychological, emotional, and environmental factors. This includes supporting players with identity beyond sport, future career planning, and equipping them with tools for proactively managing their wellbeing.

It’s also about normalising that challenges are an inherent part of both sport and life. Players will inevitably encounter periods of difficulty in their sport or in life. While these experiences can be important for growth and building resilience, they can also be demanding to navigate alone. At those times, support is essential, both in offering guidance and in reinforcing that prioritising their welfare is necessary, not optional. How that is done is individual, so my role is to help players identify and apply the strategies that best support them at that moment.

So the balance isn’t about dividing focus, it’s about integration. By supporting the whole person, you create the conditions for both wellbeing and performance to coexist and reinforce one another.

How closely do you work with coaching and performance staff during this period, and how do you ensure player development priorities are integrated rather than competing with performance goals?

It is a collaborative approach. There’s a shared understanding that supporting the person supports the performance and feeding into conversations around player’s allostatic load and wellbeing, it’s all integrated into the environment rather than sitting separately.

For example when I was asked to facilitate Breathwork and Yoga at Six Nations camp, I met with the head coach and discussed the objective and outcome for the session and how he wanted it to support the players both physically and mentally. We discussed the structure of the player’s schedule that day and that week which informed the style of breathwork and type of yoga best to support the players overall wellbeing. Players were able to step out of the constant “go” mode and into a more restorative state. The feedback was that it helped them feel calmer, more focused, and better able to recover, not just physically, but mentally as well.

That alignment is key, especially in the women’s game, where creating sustainable, supportive environments is essential for both performance and long-term growth of the sport.

Can you share an example of where your role made a meaningful difference to a player’s experience or performance environment?

An important example involved supporting a player who was experiencing elevated allostatic load, compounded by financial pressure and its impact on their overall wellbeing. The first step was helping them recognise how this external stressor was affecting their nervous system, recovery, and day-to-day performance.

In our work together, it also became clear how common it is for women in elite sport to minimise their achievements and doubt their abilities, even at the highest level. Research on the “confidence gap” shows that women are more likely to underestimate their abilities by around 20–30%, while men tend to overestimate theirs, despite equivalent performance outcomes. This really resonated with the player and helped normalise what they were experiencing.

From there, we explored their desire to pursue a dual career pathway. A key part of the process was supporting them to reframe their identity, helping them fully recognise they are in the top 1% of their field, and to see their transferable skills such as discipline, resilience, leadership, and high-performance mindset as highly valuable in the workplace.

As their confidence grew, they began to clearly identify where they could contribute beyond rugby and to see possibilities they hadn’t previously considered.

The outcome was that the player is now pursing corporate roles that supports and complements their rugby career, allowing them to develop a dual career pathway while continuing to perform at elite level.