The Irish international rugby 'trailblazer' and her legacy of cancer awareness

They gathered to remember "a girl like no other" - a trailblazing rugby player whose exploits on the pitch were cruelly cut short by her death at just 33.

Last Saturday, on a sunny September afternoon two teams from two different corners of Northern Ireland came to City of Derry to contest the Rosie Stewart Memorial Bowl.

Stewart, from Londonderry, won four caps for Ireland between 1999 and 2000 and was a founding member of Ulster Women's Rugby but, in 2003, she died after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

The memorial match is held every year in her memory and also to promote female health, a cause her sister Colette Risely said would have been close to Stewart's heart.

"I think the more we do the talking, the more lives we will save," she said.

"Rosie would be the one to promote the awareness too if she could."

On Saturday, Stewart's former club Cooke, which contest the memorial match every year, took on Enniskillen in Stewart's home city, watched on by the likes of Collette, her father John Gallagher and husband Adrian, who said his wife was a "girl like no other".

But what was going on off the pitch was just as important, with a women's health discussion held before the match hosted by the Western Trust's Jacinta McCool and fitness coach Claire O'Hagan.

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