“Once more with feeling” could easily be the catch cry for Scott Bemand’s Ireland squad as they head for the Hive Stadium on Saturday seeking a third away victory in this season’s Six Nations championship.
Chatting at the high performance centre there is uniformity amongst the players that there is plenty of energy left to fulfil that goal. The significant strides that the group have made from last year, first the WXV1 tournament in Canada and then the present Six Nations campaign, augur well for the upcoming World Cup in England later in the year.
The players and coaches want to sign off and head into an end-of-season mini-break on the back of a third-place finish before they reconvene on June 2nd for a nine-week run-in to the World Cup that will include a couple of warm-up matches during the summer.
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Assistant coach Denis Fogarty elaborated a little on what a victory in Scotland would mean to tag on to those wins in Parma and Newport.
“It will be massive for us, especially going into a World Cup block. It’s quite important for us that we keep that momentum going. It was a tough outing against England, but how they bounced back has shown that growth, that resilience within the group. They [the players] were quite frustrated, which is a good thing, after Wales [last weekend despite the win]. The focus now is ensuring that we finish on a high.
“Overall the depth within the squad is growing, which has helped. It even helps from a training point of view in how competitive things are getting. It’s massive for us. We’ve spoken about it all week, of making sure that we finish this on a high and go into it [World Cup block] in a good space.”
One aspect of Ireland’s game that needed a salve in Wales after colliding with the bruising might of the England pack was the scrum. It’s Fogarty’s area of expertise, amongst others, so he was asked for a holistic view of how that particular set-piece has performed in the tournament.
“Overall it has been positive enough [but] probably very frustrating in the English game with how we managed it. I know the players were as well because they probably just didn’t allow us to get more out of that first half when we looked [back] at it.
“Someone like Sadhbh [McGrath], who has been out with injuries, to see her get minutes like that [against Wales] has been really, really important. Equally for someone like Siobhán [McCarthy], who a year ago wouldn’t have had a huge number of minutes, they’ve grown into that position. It’s getting really competitive within the squad here.
“Looking at last weekend from a scrum point of view it was positive, but there’s bits we need to get a lot better at. I would have spoken to them about it this week. When you move up the ranks, grow at the speed we’ve grown over the last year, when you get to the top teams and the tier one teams, the minor details count massively.
“That is a big thing that we have been focusing on, because we got some [things] wrong last week and we’re trying to cut that out. It has been a big focus. These small, minor details are really, really important for us, and we need to get a lot, lot better at really, [to guarantee] really good habits under pressure.”
Ireland have won 15 of their last 17 matches against Scotland but one of those defeats was the corresponding fixture at Saturday’s venue in 2023. The Scots have one win in the current campaign, a 24-21 victory over Wales.
Fogarty said: “They’re a very, very good set-piece team. They’ll have a very strong maul. It has kind of teed us up. I suppose the last few games when we watched them they haven’t changed massively in terms of pictures that we’ll see. It’s just making sure that we’re getting that in our heads from a defensive point of view.
“We are predicting a tight match. I think that’s been another area in which we have grown over the last 12 months. We have been in tight games. We speak about it as well, to remember those times, Scotland last year in Belfast and New Zealand in the WXV.
“We look back at those moments and kind of go remember what that felt like, remember what we had to do to close out those games. They are things we have spoken about, and that’s what we try to do from a training point of view, put them (the players) in those types of pressure environments, what they would face in a game; they have reacted really well to that.”
It bodes well for the weekend in Edinburgh.
