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Sophie Spence [right] celebrates with Niamh Briggs last time out against Wales. ©INPHO/Donall Farmer
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Nora Stapleton column: We will look to outplay this big English team

The Ireland out-half says she and her teammates are ‘trying to do our country proud’ as they aim for a Triple Crown.

IRELAND WOMEN ARE playing for a Triple Crown at Twickenham on Saturday evening and we’re in a really positive frame of mind.

Despite a weekend off from matches, we were in camp last Saturday and we got through two sessions that day, just working on things we needed to improve ahead of the English game. The feeling around the camp is really good and I think everyone’s really excited about Saturday.

The coaches, led by Phillip Doyle, obviously have a huge input into what we do in training, but once we get on the pitch, it’s all about the players bringing the attitude and the tactics. So last weekend was about the coaches working with us, but at Twickenham it’s down to what the players can bring.

England are a high quality team and a lot of the girls in their squad have been playing rugby since they were teenagers. When you have 10 years or more of rugby experience, and then add that onto the developmental structure they have in England, they can reach international level at a more advanced physical level than us.

Handling skills and things like that wouldn’t be an issue because we’re a country full of sports, whether it’s GAA, soccer, hockey, basketball. All of us on the team have come from other sporting backgrounds, so we had good fundamental sporting abilities.

We’re getting there with most of our players now, but the English girls would probably be more powerful. In attack, we have looked to back our evasion skills and our handling to overcome bigger teams in the last few seasons. Defensively, tackle technique is very important; if you go high on the English girls, they’ll simply knock you over.

Every single tackle counts, it’s not as if you can make a half-ditch effort and expect the English girl to stop. It’s about taking responsibility and then taking charge of that tackle area.

The Ireland team The team photo before we took on Wales. ©INPHO / Donall Farmer ©INPHO / Donall Farmer / Donall Farmer

In terms of our build up, we fly out today and then we’ll have a brief training session tomorrow in order to familiarise ourselves with Twickenham. Come match day, we might not get up until around 8.30 or 9.00am because it’s an evening kick-off.

There’ll be a stretching session before breakfast and then there’ll be a meeting afterwards. The backs might get together and have a quick chat through our plans for the game. After that, everyone does different things.

Some girls will catch up on their sleep for a couple of hours; it’s not easy working, training and playing all in the same week! Some of us will watch movies, and our winger Ashleigh Baxter has even brought her Playstation away on weekends before. Everyone’s different.

We look to arrive in the stadium around an hour and a half before kick-off. The first thing to get out of the way is the team photo and then our warm-up is very detailed and timed to a tee. The kickers usually go out on the pitch five minutes before everyone else, just to get a feel for the conditions and get a few nerve-settling kicks done.

The actual team warm-up is not even half an hour long; it’s really short and snappy. That 25-28 minutes is very, very well planned out with three minutes at one exercise, one minute stretching in between, two minutes at the next one, and so on.

Once we’re back in the changing room, we’ll get our jerseys on and it’s a chance for the final few minutes to get yourself right before the huddle. The atmosphere varies from game to game, but because England is such a big one, there’ll be a lot of fire in the bellies on Saturday.

Heather O'Brien scores the first try of the game Heather O'Brien scores against Wales. ©INPHO / Donall Farmer ©INPHO / Donall Farmer / Donall Farmer

Generally, myself and a few of the other girls prefer more of a sit-down approach, visualising how you’re going to do things in a certain situation. Others will be up stamping their feet and beginning to blow fire out the nostrils. Each to their own, but after five minutes we’re into the team huddle and that’s when we really gel.

Seeing how much it means to your teammates, feeling that passion, is really special.

This match is being screened live on RTÉ and we think it’s great. Before this season, it would have been friends and family emailing asking them to stream games or show them live, but just looking on the IRFU Facebook page and seeing all the comments from a really wide range of people, it’s obvious that the whole thing has grown.

We love playing rugby; we want to give something back by winning and we’re trying to do our country proud. Whoever does watch the game on TV or fly over specifically for the women’s game, we’re just hoping to do them proud.

It means so much to us and we never thought we’d see this day. We want to keep performing and improving with every game, so it’s really exciting coming into Saturday at Twickenham.

Nora Stapleton is the Leinster and Ireland out-half. You can follow her on Twitter. Nora made her debut against Italy in 2010 and was part of the Grand Slam-winning team in 2013.

 Ireland Women face England on Saturday at Twickenham, with kick-off at 6.20pm.

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