However far you wander, your club will always welcome you back. Capped for Ireland and Munster captain last season, it was a return to her club, Blackrock, that renewed Maeve Óg O’Leary’s love of rugby.O’Leary hails from Ballina-Killaloe, twin towns that span the Shannon – one side in Tipperary, the other in Clare. But there’s no mistaking where her county loyalties lie.“I’m from the Ballina side, and I take full ownership of that. I love Tipp,” she says, adding the local joke is that the best thing about Killaloe is its view across the river.It’s also a part of the world that’s no stranger to a Munster rugby legend or two, with Keith Wood and Anthony and Rosie Foley hailing from there. And it was the latter who played a role in O’Leary’s introduction to the sport.A former Ireland international, Rosie Foley was one of O’Leary’s secondary-school teachers, “and that’s where the rugby team started.” With the additional efforts of another local woman, Grace Kearney, the school team made the foundation of the first girl’s club team in the town.“I played camogie and, very randomly, I played softball as well for a little while, but I think what drew me towards rugby is I really like the physicality,” says O’Leary, who has moved to the backrow after starting off playing in the backline.“I was mad for it, it was really exciting, and the numbers were excellent. There must have been 30 or 40 girls down there every night. It was just pure excitement.”Her appetite for rugby whetted, O’Leary found herself in a fortunate position when it came time to head off to college in 2018. With Ballina-Killaloe only having underage teams, she was without a club when moving up to Dublin to study at DCU.Maeve Óg O’Leary in the Ireland Women's Rugby Captain's Run at Kingspan Stadium, Belfast in April 2022. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho “I went down to training [at DCU] and I think it was about my third session. Eddie Fallon was our coach, and he goes ‘we need to get you to a club’. He pointed to Eimear Currie, who is an Ireland international; her dad would bring a carload of girls over to Blackrock from DCU for training.“I said, ‘absolutely, I’ll go.’ So, I hopped into the back of the car and sure off we went, every Tuesday and Thursday.”New to Dublin, O’Leary landed on her feet, both in DCU and Blackrock, admitting rugby became part of her identity.“There’s something different about the camaraderie in rugby,” she says. “I absolutely loved Blackrock. It’s such a welcoming club. Recruitment’s a really big thing, so they’re always open to newcomers but, genuinely, I felt embedded in the team about three or four weeks after I got there, and I was like, ‘I love this.’”At home in her new surrounds, O’Leary flourished. Three years after joining Blackrock, she made her senior debut for Munster in 2021. That same season she was called up to the Ireland squad and earned her first cap against the US, followed by her first appearance in the Six Nations during Ireland’s 2022 campaign.The remarkable speed of her rise made its sudden halt due to injury all the more difficult to take.“I tore my hamstring two days before getting on the flight to Japan,” she explains, referencing Ireland’s summer tour in 2022. “That was my first serious injury, so not that there’s a novelty with it, but you just think, ‘oh, this is grand, I’ll bounce back.’”Fortunately, she did make a strong recovery, returning in time to help Blackrock to an AIL title that December, and she was back in the Test fold for the 2023 Six Nations.Munster’s Maeve Óg O’Leary is challenged by Poppy Garvey of Connacht in the interpro championship in August 2025. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan/Inpho Although everything seemed back on track, more trouble was brewing. During a game for Munster against the Barbarians later in the season, O’Leary felt a niggle in her knee that would take her out of action once again.“It started off as a dull, nervy, achy pain, and eventually it got so much worse,” she says. The issue was later identified as cartilage breakdown affecting both knees and which required surgery. The procedures were done separately, in May and September of 2024, leading to an extended period away from the pitch.“At the time, the surgeon wasn’t quite sure if I’d be able to return to rugby, or at what level. We were really just working in the unknown for a little while.”But determination brought her back in 2025, first with Blackrock and later with Munster, captaining the province to an interpro title.Far from regretful of the time lost to injury, O’Leary appreciates the perspective it offered her.“It allowed me to play with a sense of freedom that I hadn’t played with before.“I’d probably gotten to a space with my mindset that I had serious pressure on myself all the time. You start rugby when you’re young and play for fun, whereas when I got older and started playing for an Ireland jersey and trying to be selected, it became this pressure cooker.“So coming back after 13 months I was like, ‘I don’t give a s**t.’”While she’d never turn down an Ireland recall, for now, she’s playing it by ear, focusing on next month’s interpros with Munster and Blackrock’s AIL season, which gets under way in October.“Now what I want to do is just go and play the rugby that I have the most fun playing, because I will perform my best when I’m relaxed and enjoying myself. If that gets me [back] into an Irish jersey, I’d be absolutely delighted, that would be amazing, but at the same time, I think I just want to play what’s in front of me too and enjoy that.”