IRELAND HEAD COACH Scott Bemand believes his players are more than capable of causing headaches for England in their Women’s Six Nations clash at Twickenham Stadium this Saturday.
Ireland recorded their first Six Nations win under Bemand at the third time of asking with an emphatic 36-5 bonus point triumph over Wales last Saturday — a welcome boost for a nation that finished at the foot of the 2023 Championship table with zero wins to their name.
Although damage limitation is often spoken about whenever Ireland come up against England in a women’s rugby international, this isn’t the message that Bemand will be giving to his troops in the coming days.
“We’ll go after firing our shots, getting our game out there,” Bemand said on Tuesday.
Part of the stepped approach from where we were to where we want to get to is, we’re going to need to win some moments in this game.
“You talk around breaking the game down and you go after your first moments. Then you’ve got to do it again.
At some point you’re going to have the momentum against you and you’ve got to survive. You’ve got to wrestle momentum back and then get pressure on the opposition.
“It’s the same with any game, it’s the same as what we had the other day.
“We know some capabilities that England have got. We know our girls are advancing pretty quickly in terms of what they can do. We’ll go after our game and we’ll go after trying to cause England some headaches.”
Hereford native Bemand was formerly the lead coach of the English women’s side from 2015 to 2023, a period that saw them accumulating six Championship titles and five Grand Slams.
In the build-up to last year’s meeting in Cork last year, head coach Simon Middleton acknowledged there was a need to make the games in the Women’s Six Nations more competitive.
England went on to defeat Ireland 48-0, and there seems to be no sign of England slowing down under Middleton’s successor John Mitchell, emphasised by the fact they have amassed 140 points (and conceded just 10) in the opening three rounds of the Six Nations.
Yet Bemand has insisted it is up to the remaining teams in the tournament to get themselves up to England’s level and while it isn’t something that is expected to happen overnight, he is hopeful Ireland will become more of a force in the next few years.
“England have got to focus on what England do. It’s not up to them to play down to other teams. They’ve got to focus on us and it’s up to us to get after our own performances, our own playing pool, our style of play, how we train for it. Are we doing that? I would say we are.
“It was one of the reasons I took the job. If I didn’t think it was being gone after in a serious way, I wouldn’t be here. Plaudits to the IRFU for supporting it. It has to start somewhere.
“It’s making ground pretty quick because we know what we’re going after.
England have got to focus on England. The rest of us have got to focus on us and we are trying to close that gap as quickly as we can.”
Meanwhile, Bemand is expected to have a relatively full hand to pick from for Saturday’s game in Twickenham – for which more 44,500 tickets have already been sold.
Linda Djougang and Aoife Wafer were withdrawn in the second half of the Wales game last Saturday with knocks, but Bemand stated yesterday that he anticipates the duo will be available for selection this weekend.
“Linda and Aoife took a bit of a bang, which left us with 14 at the end. Rugby is a collision sport, people have been recovering well this week, and both are expected to be available.”