Scott Bemand insists Ireland ‘ready to bounce back’ from England defeat against Scotland

Ireland suffered an 88-10 hammering by England at Twickenham last weekend which was the highest points total the Red Roses have ever scored against Ireland.

Ireland are fifth in the table ahead of this weekend’s final round of games.

Lock and co-captain Sam Monaghan is set to return to the team after missing the England game and, besides hooker Sarah Delaney, Bemand says he’ll have a full squad to choose from.

Bemand believes players have recovered from Twickenham despite the nature of the loss with England scoring 14 tries.

“Sometimes teams give teams they are playing too much respect. Once the floodgates started opening there is an experience piece about how you control momentum when it is cascading against you,” Bemand said today.

“We have had some really good conversations this week, we have tested it in training and judging by training this morning the players are fully ready to bounce back.

“We talked around the why things happened, why people made decisions, why momentum looks like momentum did and I think we turned the page a couple of days in.

“We’re back on the pitch, back training and fully gassed up ready for the weekend.”

Today's Sport News in 90 Seconds - 23rd April

Ireland’s target in this Women’s Six Nations has been to qualify for next year’s Rugby World Cup and they can guarantee that with a third-place finish.

Scotland – who lie third in the table two points ahead of Italy and Ireland - have winning momentum going into Saturday’s game after recording their first win in Italy last weekend.

“We want to put ourselves in a position to achieve what we set out at the beginning. I think the Six Nations has got the competition it wanted.

“France and England are competing hard for the Championship and there’s a group of four of us that the results are in our own hands,” Bemand continued.

“It carries a ‘last weekend’ feel of a game that matters. It’s on our shores and hopefully we can get the people of Belfast to come to the Kingspan to support it.

“We want to get to the World Cup. Whether we do that by finishing third and getting the automatic spot or whether we go through the WXV2 process that World Rugby have got in place. But our aspirations are still to get to that World Cup.

“This was always going to be the next step on the road to building. What we want to be is a really competitive, high performing, women’s team.

“There’s a bigger piece at play as well which will probably look even further into the future with all the work that is going on with WNTS (Women’s National Talent Squad) and pathway pieces, and players coming in and being available for sevens and 15s, which hopefully will lead to Ireland success in the future, in 2029, for example.”