Following two rounds of the current Celtic Challenge campaign, Nia Fajeyisan appears to have solidified her argument for inclusion in Sean Lynn’s senior Welsh national team.
During the recent weekend’s match, the winger successfully scored a try, contributing to Gwalia Lightning’s 38-7 victory against fellow Welsh team Brython Thunder at Cardiff Arms Park. Over these two game weekends, the athlete, previously a goalkeeper for Cardiff City’s academy, has already equaled her total number of appearances from the previous season and secured her initial try for the squad.
Despite her youth, this individual has already accumulated significant experience in her professional journey. Her achievements encompass representing Wales at the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games, held in Trinidad & Tobago, participating in age-grade Rugby Europe tournaments, and competing for her nation at various youth levels.
Her impressive performance at the start of the season follows closely on the heels of Fajeyisan’s initial appearance for the Great Britain Sevens team, which occurred during the HSBC SVNS Series events in Dubai and Cape Town.
In the initial two stages of the 2025/26 Series season, Fajeyisan, along with the Great Britain team – primarily composed of young international players from both Wales and England – finished at the very bottom of the rankings for two consecutive weekends.
During the second weekend’s competition in Cape Town, Fajeyisan notched her inaugural try for Great Britain. She competed alongside her Wales Under-20s colleagues, Hanna Marshall and Jorja Aiono, with whom she had previously played in the Six Nations Women’s Summer Series.
Serving as a standout performer for Jonathan Hooper’s squad during their time in South Africa, her background in sevens rugby combined with her strong early-season showings for Gwalia suggests that the young player might soon earn full international caps.
Following Wales’ swift departure from the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, Sean Lynn emphasized the critical importance of athletes participating in the Celtic Challenge tournament.
The team he assembled for the championship included several promising young talents (Molly Reardon, Tilly Vucaj, Seren Lockwood, and Nel Metcalfe) who had excelled in the six-team league earlier in the year.
During the Women’s Rugby World Cup, Wales registered the third-lowest number of tries in the entire event (with six), surpassed only by Brazil (one) and Samoa (zero).
Given an apparent deficiency in offensive capability, coupled with an anticipated transition of players leading up to the 2026 Guinness Women’s Six Nations, it is conceivable that Fajeyisan’s name will be included among established players such as Jasmine Joyce-Butchers and Lisa Neumann.
The Welsh Rugby Union recently declared its intention to elevate its yearly financial commitment to women’s rugby, projecting an increase from £3.7 million to £5.7 million by the year 2030.
As part of this initiative, there is a strategy to amplify their yearly financial input into their pair of Celtic Challenge squads by more than three times within the subsequent five years.
Fajeyisan is already a well-recognized personality in Cardiff. In 2023, while still pursuing her studies, an artistic representation of her was revealed in Adamsdown, forming part of Urdd’s 2023 message promoting peace and goodwill against racism.
At that particular moment, Fajeyisan characterized the experience of witnessing her own image displayed on the exterior of a building as both “unreal” and “strange,” yet affirmed that she did not feel “ashamed by it.”
Lightning’s subsequent match is scheduled for Saturday, January 10th, when they will journey to face the Glasgow Warriors.
