Three years ago Joe Schmidt bemoaned the short break Ireland had between matches in the 2014 Six Nations Championship.
“Just winning those home ones would be good, especially with Wales on a six-day turnaround – that’s a really big ask,” said Schmidt. “I think its unfortunate we’re not going to get a good run into what is a really tough team to beat.”
On Wednesday Ireland won a brutally physical game against Australia in their first game of the Women's Rugby World Cup. Like all the other teams in the pools, Claire Molloy and her players have just three days to recover before playing again against Japan on Sunday.
If the hosts are to make it to the final in Belfast on Saturday August 26th, they will have played five international matches in a 16-day World Cup window.
Schmidt would not be happy with that schedule, so why should Irish women's coach Tom Tierney or medical doctor Molloy be happy?
“Well, no comment,” said Tierney when asked about the three-day turnaround following the Irish win over Australia. Put on the spot and perhaps not wishing to rain on the Irish organisers’ or World Rugby’s parade, Tierney knows as well as any coach that not only does a condensed tournament heavily mitigate against weaker squads, but it also raises player welfare concerns.
Hong Kong lost 98-0 to Canada in their first game which finished at around 7pm on Wednesday. They now face one of the tournament favourites, New Zealand, first match on Sunday morning.
Final run-out
It means the whipping girls of the competition, ranked 23rd, will have had to play the second and third-ranked teams in the world either side of three days before a final run-out against 10th-ranked Wales.
"Yeah, obviously we'd love it to be longer," says Australian captain Shannon Parry. "Play it like the men and play it over six weeks with a game a weekend.
“Everyone has got a three-day turnaround so it pretty much starts now, the recovery, to get as many players as we can up for selection against France.”
Parry knows about high performance. She is a gold medal-winning sevens player, a veteran of Rio and one of the many crossover players at the tournament.
She is also accurate about the men’s Rugby World Cup, where Tier 1 teams are given seven days to recover. The controversy surrounding the men’s event centres on some nations, often the weaker, allotted just four days’ rest before playing again. But never three days.
Senior Tier 1 sides would not be asked to do five consecutive matches every three days, although Under-20s and Nations Cup teams do.
While there is a reticence among teams to strongly speak out, there is consensus that three days is simply too short.
"Yeah, that's hard but as a team we have to just progress," says New Zealand left wing Renee Wickliffe. "But it is what it is. Yes, we would love to have a longer break . . . it is what it is."
Both players and coaching staff agree that it is not easy on bodies. English coach Simon Middleton admits that the structure of the tournament has forced him to manage his players in a particular way.
Benched
Against Spain he benched some of his stronger performers, including the talented Emily Scarratt, who came in at half-time.
Asked whether three days were enough or whether women’s bodies tended to break less than men, Middleton was pragmatic.
“It [three days] has got to be [enough],” he says. “The players have just as much physical commitment [as the men] as well as emotional commitment to it. Yeah, it’s tough.
“That will be reflected in the way we manage the squad through the pool stages and then hopefully to the semi-final and final. The real key focus is about recovery for the players who have played.”
Glen Moore’s New Zealand have just been ousted by England as the number one side in the world. Moore carefully avoids any gender comparisons but, like the English view, it is what it is.
“Ideally we’d like that [longer rest],” he says. “This is what we’ve got. We’ve just got to deal with what we’ve been given.
“It’s tough. Ideally, we’d like longer but we haven’t got that so we make sure that we take all the learning from the last three tournaments with the short turnaround.”
Injury rates
World Rugby says competition injury research does not suggest any overall differences in injury rates between three-, four- or five-day turnaround in the elite men’s game, while women’s rugby injury rates tend on average to be lower in prevalence and severity.
“The tournament has been organised with team welfare and performance at heart,” said a World Rugby spokesman. “The match schedule model was successfully operational in 2014 and is identical to other senior men’s international competitions such as the Nations Cup and the Americas Pacific Challenge.”
World Rugby adds that while the men often have long travel times between venues, team camps and match days, travel is limited at the Women’s Rugby World Cup.
