Munster are the most recent Irish team to win the URC in 2022–23, while Leinster are the most successful side historically.

At the local level, fifty club sides compete in the five divisions of the All-Ireland League, of which Cork Constitution are the current champions.

They compete in the annual Six Nations Championship, the four-yearly Rugby World Cup, and various mid-year and autumn international matches.

The national team has won several Triple Crowns and three Grand Slams and is able to play at a competitive level with the world's rugby giants, having beaten all including New Zealand in the last five years.

The Wolfhounds generally play "A" teams of the other major European powers and senior sides of lower-tier nations.

Ireland hosted the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup, and lost to Wales 17–27 in the eighth place play off.

[12] Today, they compete in the United Rugby Championship (URC) alongside teams from Scotland, Wales, Italy and South Africa,[13] and the European Rugby Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup, which also include teams from France and England.

[15] Each province has an academy programme to develop young players from local schools and clubs to professional level.

[16] Regular internationals are signed on central contracts to the IRFU, meaning that they, and not the provinces, control when the players play and when they rest.

European Cup games are generally well supported in all the provinces, with sellouts the norm and massive crowds in Dublin's Lansdowne Road for quarterfinal and semifinal matches.

[31] Connacht completed ground expansion and renovation works in time for the 2011/2012 season with the construction of the Clan Terrace.

Before the opening of Aviva Stadium, Ireland international games sold out against all but the weakest opposition, and with the team playing at Croke Park during the reconstruction of Lansdowne Road, attendances regularly topped 80,000.

However, the Aviva saw disappointing attendance during its first Tests in 2010, with no match selling out; media reports indicated that this was largely due to an IRFU ticketing strategy that made little sense in an uncertain economy.

More recent Tests have seen crowds much closer to capacity, including sellouts or near-sellouts for all of Ireland's Six Nations home fixtures.

[34] The Irish Football Union was founded to govern the game in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster in December 1874.

Ireland's most capped players of the amateur era include North of Ireland centre Mike Gibson (69), Ballymena lock Willie John McBride (63), Blackrock flanker Fergus Slattery (61), Dungannon lock Paddy Johns (59), and Old Wesley prop Philip Orr (58).

The League expanded to a 22-match schedule in 2003,[53] and for the first time the Irish provinces could operate as full-time professional teams, with players only rarely able to play for their clubs.

In the meantime, home internationals were played at the Gaelic Athletic Association's stadium, Croke Park.

Although rugby has traditionally been associated with the more anglophile elements of Irish society, it has not been without its following in the nationalist and republican communities.

De Valera was a close friend of the Ryan brothers at Rockwell who played on Ireland's Triple Crown-winning team in 1899.

De Valera remained a lifelong devotee of rugby, attending numerous international matches up to and towards the end of his life despite near blindness.

The changing climate in Northern Ireland politics has altered this perceived tradition with the introduction of rugby into an increasing number of Roman Catholic grammar and secondary schools which were previously exclusively associated with Gaelic games.

During the late 19th century, in response to the perceived encroachment of English sports, including rugby, Irish nationalist Michael Cusack set up the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

[57] However, the rule was relaxed while Lansdowne Road was being redeveloped, and rugby was played in Croke Park[58] including a match between Leinster and Munster that broke the club rugby attendance record; see List of non-Gaelic games played in Croke Park for exceptions to this rule.

[59] The following match against England generated some controversy, since it involved the playing of God Save the Queen at a ground where British soldiers had killed fourteen spectators on Bloody Sunday, 1920.

[60][61] There was a small protest by Republican Sinn Féin outside the ground which included a man holding a sign saying No to foreign games while ironically wearing a Celtic FC tracksuit.

[65] Leinster broke this record at Croke Park again in 2024, drawing a capacity 82,300 crowd for an Investec Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton Saints.