CASTLEWELLAN native Ashleigh Orchard says it will take some time to fully comprehend her appearance at this year’s Paris Olympics.
Ashleigh returned home at the start of last week, after helping the Ireland Women’s rugby sevens team to an eighth-place finish in France.
The former Ulster player admits it feels like Ireland’s campaign has came to an end before it’s even started.
“Leading into the Olympics, especially in rugby, there was a bit of not getting too far ahead of yourself.
“I was going in trying not to get too excited or too invested in the fact it was happening, just in case I ended up getting hurt or something in training, so I was trying to bring it all down a bit in terms of how I was feeling.
“Now all of a sudden it’s done.”
The Ireland Women were making their debut in the Olympic sevens tournament, having failed to reach the Rio games in 2016 and the Tokyo games in 2021.
The girls in green opened their campaign with a 21-12 loss to Great Britain and Northern Ireland before going on to record an impressive 38-0 win over South Africa and a narrow 19-14 loss to Australia.
These results were enough to see Allan Temple-Jones’ side through to the quarter-finals, where they again faced the Wallaroos.
Ireland would go on to lose 40-7 in that quarter-final, before rounding off their time in Paris with a defeat to hosts France and another loss to GB and NI.
Commenting on facing Australia in the quarter-final, a side who would just fall short of winning the bronze medal, Ashleigh said: “That’s a tough game. We were hoping to do better in our pool and get a better quarter-final, and unfortunately that didn’t happen.”
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