WE WERE DELIGHTED with our 59-0 win over Scotland on Friday, but we know that we’ll face a much tougher test when Wales visit Ashbourne this weekend.
To score 11 tries was brilliant; I don’t think we’ve ever scored that amount, no matter what opposition is up against us. Before the game our captain Fiona Coghlan had turned around and said, ‘Look, we’ve played Scotland over the last three years and we haven’t been happy with one of the performances yet.’
We wanted to go out and make a claim for ourselves, to be happy with our own performance and not to have any regrets. We scored plenty of tries out wide on Friday night, but it wasn’t really a plan to target them there. We try to play to where the space is and where we think we can attack.
We have Allison Miller out wide and she’s a huge threat once she gets any sort of speed up. Sophie Spence got a hat-trick from the second row; she’s very strong but she’s also really quick too. We scored from a nice line-out play as well, but I’m sure other teams are going to start picking up on our moves soon.
Our head coach Phillip Doyle gives us full decision-making responsibility on the pitch, which is good for an out-half like myself. We don’t go into games with strict set patterns; we don’t say we’re going to hit up in the centre then go left or right or anything like that. We simply use our attack to exploit where we think we can find spaces.
Once we identify space, we try to get the ball to those gaps. If we’re hitting the 10/12 channel, we might use inside centre Jenny Murphy on the first move, then we might skip her on the second move. Again, it’s all based on what the defence have done as well. We might have an overall plan to keep things tight or move it wide, but we adjust it within each match as well.
The Six Nations means that there is quite a short turnaround between games, even if we did play on Friday last weekend. On Saturday morning, we were in the pool at 8 o’clock, which helps to flush out the toxins and loosen up the muscles. Most of us woke up that morning very fatigued, so the pool definitely helped.
Sunday was a rest day, so a few of us went to the men’s game against Scotland. It was great to see them win after ourselves and the U20s had too. Yesterday morning, I was out on the pitch doing a bit of skills work. My kicking was very poor on Friday night, so I did lots of place-kicking practice.
We were back into the gym last night for some conditioning work, so it’s quite a quick turnaround. Today and tomorrow, we’ll all be back working. I’m the Women’s and Girls’ Rugby Development Executive for the IRFU, so that keeps me busy for those two days, but we’ll also get a bit more training in.
We’re back in camp again on Thursday morning. The purpose of the training sessions in between games is mainly maintenance. So our session yesterday was 40 minutes max and it was just about keeping that sharpness in the muscles. We might do a bit of ball handling and then our gym session today is about maintenance, not really trying to get stronger at this time.
Back in camp on Thursday, we’ll do a very light 30 minute session at lunchtime, then we’ll come back and do a captain’s run at 6 o’clock that evening. That wouldn’t be more than an hour and it’s just about going through our scrum, line-out and backline options mainly. We play on Friday night at 7.30pm.
Despite being out of camp at the moment, it’s hard to switch off. The Scotland game was Friday night, but it took me until Sunday night before I stopped thinking about it. It’s hard to walk away from it and you constantly go over what you could have done better. I ended up watching the game again; it’s very hard to switch off with such a short turnaround.
We don’t do too much individual video analysis; we leave that up to the management. You’ll see a few of the forwards looking at the set-piece, but as a backline lots of things can change within the games. We have an idea of what way the opposition will generally play due to the video work but we don’t spend hours on it.
I’m expecting a bit of a backlash from Wales on Friday because they got beaten at home by Italy last weekend. That was a huge shock and I think Italy won it by sneaking a few scores even though Wales controlled the game. They’ll be angry and they have a new number 10, Elinor Snowsill, who seems to be attacking the line quite well. They’ve new players coming in, but they’re always physical at the breakdown.
We haven’t spoken about another Grand Slam; our focus has to be game-by-game. Having won it last year, it makes it ten times harder this season. France beat England over the weekend, another shock. You just can’t take anything for granted in the Six Nations.
- 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 Wales on Friday night in Ashbourne RFC, with kick-off at 7.30pm.
