Impressive Scotland bringing some real momentum into Belfast date with Ireland
Head coach Scott Bemand will be hoping Ireland bounce back from the heavy defeat by England. Photo: Sportsfile
Ireland forward Brittany Hogan sent out a measured message this week when she said they’re not putting the pressure of World Cup qualification on themselves when they play Scotland at Ravenhill today in the final round of the Women’s Six Nations. Ireland will have to beat Scotland – who are third in the table to Ireland’s fifth – and better Italy’s result against Wales to finish third, with the reward of an automatic qualifying spot for next year’s global tournament in England.
This is not last-chance saloon territory when it comes to World Cup qualification. The final chance comes at the WXV competition later this year, with the top six ranked non-qualified teams qualifying. And Ireland will put themselves in a good position if they finish fourth or fifth in the Women’s Six Nations table, which will automatically get them into Tier 2.
A pragmatic way of judging the progress of this Ireland team is where they’ve come from recently rather than where they can go. As if you need a reminder, they finished last in the 2023 Six Nations on zero points. So going from that to finishing third would almost feel like an overachievement, considering how disastrous last year went. And yet they’ve given themselves a shot of doing that.
That hammering by England would need to have been binned pretty quickly by players while head coach Scott Bemand did take off Eve Higgins and Neve Jones early in that game. This championship endgame was always about Scotland. The refreshed Sam Monaghan’s return to the team cannot be overstated. As well as the line-out, her impact is such that she had the most overall carries of any player after three rounds, even though she only played two games. Same with line-outs won, she was second in that.
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England aside, Scotland have been the darlings of this Six Nations so far in many ways. The suspended Chloe Rollie is a big loss but her replacement, Meryl Smith, started against Italy and France. And it was their performance against France – even though they lost – that really sounds a siren.
While they’ve completed firsts in this tournament with a first win in Wales in 20 years and a first ever Women’s Six Nations win in Italy last weekend which lifted them to sixth in the world rankings (Ireland are 10th), Scotland were the one team that really put it up to one of the ‘top tier’ nations with that performance against France. They only trailed 5-8 before France scored a try in the 81st minute.
Undoubtedly, Ireland can pick up where they left off against Wales in Cork and bring their attacking game to Belfast but Scotland might just be further along in their professional journey.
Verdict: Scotland
