Scott Bemand claims Women’s Six Nations is still viable despite mismatches

His team play Scotland in their final game of the 2024 championship in Belfast this weekend, with the side that finishes third securing a place at the 2025 Rugby World Cup.

This year’s event has once again become a two-tiered competition, with England (20) and France (19) on more than twice as many points in the table as third-placed Scotland (eight), with Ireland (six) in fifth.

England’s 88-10 win in front of 48,778 at Twickenham last Saturday was the highest points total the Red Roses have recorded against Ireland.

​Their average winning margin for their three previous games – against Italy, Wales and Scotland – was 43 points.

England now face France, who beat Wales 40-0 at Cardiff Arms Park last Sunday, on Saturday in a Grand Slam decider in Bordeaux.

And Bemand believes the competition’s structure continues to work, despite a lot of the results suggesting otherwise.

“The fact that people are talking about it shows how much interest there is. Do I think it’s a viable competition? Yes, I do,” Bemand claimed.

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“People and the media want quick fixes for things, but there’s investment going in, there’s focus being put on it.

“We said after the game last weekend – that arena and that atmosphere is something that our players have to learn [from].

​“Now we’ve got that under our belt, we’ve come through and we’re not derailed. We’ve reviewed it, parked it, we go forward. We like to think we can keep trying to bridge the gap.

​“It’s great to see the teams outside England and France going hell for leather at each other and competing hard.

“How quickly that gap is bridged remains to be seen. We need to expose those young players to as many of the sort of competitive training [sessions] and fixtures as we possibly can.

“The Celtic Challenge has grown massively from year one to year two. I’d anticipate year three looking completely different to this year, being another level up.”

Bemand believes that crushing 78-point defeat to England was merely “a blip” in a campaign where Ireland recorded a bonus-point victory against Wales in round three.

“Whether we call England a result we didn’t want, we can park that as a blip. We can retain some of that confidence and momentum against Wales, who are probably in that pool of teams that are fighting it out. We know we can produce a performance like that against Scotland again.”

Ireland are set to have co-captain Sam Monaghan, who missed the Twickenham reverse, fit for Saturday’s finale.