WITH TWO AND a half minutes gone on the clock, Ireland produced the play which Scott Bemand felt laid the brickwork of their 31-point win over Wales.
Those early stages were shaky for his side. Dorothy Wall uncharacteristically dropped the ball when Ireland paid their first visit to the Welsh half of the pitch. Lauren Delaney also fumbled possession to give Wales the gift of a scrum in their territory. A few lineouts didn’t land in Irish hands either. Wales were pressing for an early advantage.
They advanced to one of the Irish corners to set up for a maul, and Ireland needed a big defensive effort to hold them out. When the ground game began, it was the hosts who won that first battle, as the referee signalled for a penalty. That was enough for Bemand to believe that a first win since a 15-14 win against Scotland on 30 April, 2022 was possible.
“It was a match-defining moment,” said a delighted Bemand.
“They get their first maul and the forwards keep them out. It’s funny what momentum and confidence can do to a group. We knew that the maul was something we’d have to deal with and I’m so pleased for the girls that they’ve been able to prove to themselves that they can do it.”
Ireland survived that early period of Welsh pressure and turned the gun back on their visitors with some ferocious attack play. And then drew blood with a try from a well executed set-piece. They arranged themselves into a powerful maul which ended with Neve Jones touching the ball down, and Dannah O’Brien kicking the first of four conversions.
Two more tries followed before the clock had eclipsed the 25th minute. As their score count increased, the number of errors decreased. That was a pleasing sight for Bemand and his coaching staff.
“You would have seen the Italy game where we created opportunities but weren’t quite clinical enough under pressure and people were asking us plenty about that. We’ve just continue to work on things, skillsets need to work under more pressure, opportunities open and close quicker so you need to be more on it, anticipate more, choose which option you are going to use.
“I think we’ve worked on it, we’ve probably left a few points out there if we’re being really honest. We’ll go away and look at that and try to get better again.”
Their ruthlessness was part of that too. Ireland were 21-0 in front at half-time, surely anticipating a response from Wales on the restart. But Katie Corrigan’s try was a statement of Ireland’s intent to continue turning the screw.
“When you think you’ve got a bit of momentum, scoring after half-time is a really important thing,” Bemand said. “You go in and talk about resetting and the game plan, is it working? yes or no? We decided it was and we want to be a point-scoring defence as well so Katie getting a charge-down and a seven-pointer straight after the break was a really big moment.”
𝐊𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐍!!!
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) April 13, 2024
The teenager gets her second try of this Six Nations! A brilliant chargedown and she finished it herself!
Bonus point secured for Ireland!
☘️ 28-0 🏴#IREvWAL | #GuinnessW6N pic.twitter.com/n8JfzTQU8n
Ireland will celebrate this victory for what it is but the rejoicing will understandably be muted somewhat as they prepare to face England in Twickenham next weekend. England are the reigning champions for the past five years, and are already three wins from three in this year’s competition.
Bemand knows the English unit from his time as their head coach which delivered six Six Nations titles (including five Grand Slams), a world number one ranking and runner-up finishes in the 2017 and 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cups.
“It’s going to be a step up in test,” he replied when asked about what would constitute a win next week against the Red Roses.
“They’ve got a good pack so we’re going to have to keep working hard at defending mauls and scoring mauls of our own. We know they’ve got some good ball-carriers so how we tidy up in defence and not let them get momentum and how we compete in the breakdown, they’ve got some attacking prowess out wide, which we are going to have to manage. We think we can put ourselves in the right position to cause a few problems ourselves.”
That aside, Ireland have been comparably better than their 2023 versions in the Six Nations. Every result has been improvement on the corresponding fixtures last year. For example, against Wales, they were trailing 26-0 at half-time when they played each other in 2023. This time, Ireland were 21 points ahead at the break. Indeed, the France and Italy games ended in defeats, but Ireland were a much more competitive side compared with 12 months ago.
By every measure, they’re a side that is growing in strength.
“All we want to keep going after is improved performance,” Bemand said, clearly satisfied with the effort so far.
“We said we want to close the gap and become a World Cup contender and that’s not going to happen overnight. We just need to keep taking the next steps. Getting a winning performance is part of the next step. We’ll try to do more of the things we did well and less of the things that put pressure on us.”
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