THOSE IN THE know had told us that there was a new breed of Irish women’s rugby player coming down the pipeline.
Youngsters who lived and breathed the game from an earlier age.
Athletes with instinctive, fluid skills honed across hours and hours of practice over years of their youth. Pure rugby players.
We’re now starting the see the evidence more and more in the green jerseys of Ireland as their rebuild continues under head coach Greg McWilliams.
With Ireland’s 7s internationals absent for the current tour of Japan and a couple of others injured, opportunity knocked last weekend for six players to make their Test debuts in Shizuoka.
18-year-old out-half Dannah O’Brien, 19-year-old centre Aoife Dalton, 21-year-old fullback Méabh Deely, and 22-year-old wing Natasja Behan won their first caps in the backline as McWilliams’ side recovered from a poor start to hammer Japan 57-22.
18-year-old centre Leah Tarpey also won her first cap off the bench, as did 20-year-old second row Taryn Schutzler.
In a team that included several other young and inexperienced players, the new faces showed glimpses of their potential and the instinctive fluidity of their skills.
Benefiting from a brilliant platform provided by the dominant Irish pack, the four new caps were part of a backline that fired impressively in Shizuoka.
The second Irish try started at a strong scrum on the right and was finished by left wing Aoife Doyle.
After the Irish forwards have earned penalty advantage at the scrum, 23-year-old centre Enya Breen makes the linebreak.
Having started in a deep position to give the backline time on the ball, Breen receives a pass from out-half O’Brien and then dummies a switch pass to midfield partner Dalton.
Dalton’s convincing switch line is important here.
We can see that she has her hands up as she runs and we can hear over the ref mic that she shouts for the ball.
Dalton’s line manages to briefly hold Japan inside centre Shione Nakayama, as illustrated in white below.
With Dalton already covered on the inside, Nakayama really should be focused on tracking Breen, but she hesitates as Dalton offers a running threat on the switch.
Meanwhile, Japan outside centre Rinka Matsuda [yellow below] is concerned about fullback Deely and right wing Behan, who has started centrally and bounced out to the left.
Nakayama’s momentary hesitation, caused by Dalton’s run, means there is now a disconnection between the Japanese centres and Breen identifies it calmly.
She makes an excellent decision to carry herself rather than passing, surging into the space and then offloading to Deely as the Japanese midfielders scrag her from behind.
Deely shows good composure to ensure Ireland finish the chance on first phase.
Initially, Deely tucks the ball into her right arm as she looks to get up to top speed, but she swiftly recognises that Japan left wing Komachi Imakugi has swept across and is in position to tackle her.
So Deely gets the ball back into two hands…
… giving herself the chance to either pass before contact or offload to Doyle after taking the tackle.
The Connacht woman chooses the latter option and offloads cleanly for Doyle to finish an excellent first-phase try.
Having been used as a decoy in the instance above, outside centre Dalton was the finisher for what was Ireland’s crucial next try just before half-time, allowing them to lead at the break.
Out-half O’Brien delivers the scoring pass in this instance after lots of hard work from the Irish forwards over the preceding phases.
Dalton shows great power and balance here but there is also subtlety in her work to break the Japanese tackle attempt.
Dalton times her run at the line to perfection and skillfully changes her angle while she is accelerating.
Her initial steps are diagonally towards the ball before she subtly slants back away from the ball just before receiving the pass from O’Brien.
Dalton’s late shift means she’s not running directly into Nakayama’s left shoulder, but instead surging forward through her outstretched arms.
That means it’s easier for Dalton to fight through the tackle attempt as she shows great stability to stay up off the ground, using her left hand to balance after the contact from Nakayama.
The pass itself from O’Brien is well conceived – she opts to go for Dalton at the front door rather than pulling a pass out the back door to Breen – and also well timed to hold Nakayama’s gaze for a few split seconds before she can turn out to Dalton.
The outstanding Irish maul delivered two further tries in the second half before the backline struck clinically for another first-phase try from a scrum on the right-hand side.
The set-up is identical to the play Ireland used for Doyle’s first-half try, with the Irish backs starting deep, then O’Brien hitting Breen for her to run a dummy switch.
This time, Breen releases Deely for the linebreak and the fullback shows her pace to finish.
The success of Ireland’s previous use of this play feeds into it working again here.
While Japan inside centre Nakayama does track Breen this time and is in position to tackle her, outside centre Matsuda is the one who gets held tight by Ireland’s midfield movement.
As indicated in yellow below, Matsuda is concerned about Breen’s cross-field run. She clearly recalls Breen’s first-half break on this same play and doesn’t want it to happen again.
Meanwhile, Japan right wing Riho Kurogi [white] is completely disconnected from Matsuda as she worries about another couple of passes to width.
Deely does an excellent job of exploiting the poor defence here.
Even as Breen is moving across the pitch, Deely has her head up scanning as she moves. Deely isn’t just watching the ball, she is scanning for opportunity in the defence.
Deely rapidly recognises the opportunity and adjusts expertly to take advantage.
Again, it’s very subtle from Deely but her movement before receiving the pass is clever.
She slightly slows her upfield progress to ensure she doesn’t over-run the ball while slaloming out towards the left touchline before straightening up again. That shift takes her beyond Matsuda, who will attempt to recover back out to tackle Deely.
Breen also does an excellent job on the ball having dummied the switch pass to Dalton.
She delays her pass to Deely until the last possible moment, ensuring that Matsuda can’t turn out earlier and possibly get a grip onto Deely as she accelerates.
As for the Doyle try, Breen also has the option of passing out the back of Deely to Behan off her right wing, but Breen makes a good decision to release her fullback for a scintillating try.
Behan did lots of hard work off the ball in this game but didn’t get the same opportunities in possession as others in the backline.
She did, however, show her skill level to reel in this excellent O’Brien cross-field kick.
O’Brien impresses with her identification of space and the technical quality of her kick, while Behan does superbly to gather the ball after it bounces so close to her body, which obviously means she has less time to react to it hopping up off the ground.
An excellent tackle from Japan fullback Ria Anoku prevents Behan from breaking clear to score a debut try but the Irish wing does well to stay infield and buy time for support to arrive.
O’Brien’s kicking was excellent in this game.
She accurately eked out crucial metres with her line kicks on Irish penalties, while her kicking off the tee was a major highlight. O’Brien slotted six from nine, only narrowly missing with the unsuccessful attempts.
The effort above from wide on the left was among the clean, accurate strikes, while O’Brien showed poise to drop-kick her final conversion after the ball fell off the tee.
As with the other new caps, O’Brien understandably also made errors in the humid, heavy conditions in Shizuoka but there was so much in her performance that underlined her exciting potential at out-half.
Japan will expect to ask more demanding questions of Ireland’s young guns in the second Test in Tokyo this weekend, of course.
But McWilliams and Ireland must be very excited about the start these new faces have made in Test rugby.
