Breen: We Earned The Right To Be Here

It was their first time playing in the top tier of the WXV competition, but two brilliant bonus point wins over New Zealand, the reigning World champions, and the USA saw Ireland emerge as runners-up behind England.

For centre Breen, who captained Scott Bemand’s side for their last two matches, they achieved exactly what they set out to do when coming into camp last month ahead of Irish Rugby’s 150th Anniversary Test against Australia.

“We’ve taken a lot of positive steps forward,” she said, speaking in the aftermath of the 26-14 victory over the USA which came courtest of three unanswered second half tries.

“We spoke six weeks ago as a group when we first came together about being respected at the end of this campaign and putting our name back among the top table.

“I think we’ve taken massive steps toward that, and we’ve really earned the right to be here and mix it with the top teams.”

It has been an incredible leap of 11 places up the WXV ladder for Ireland, who were crowned WXV3 champions just twelve months ago. There have been some tough days in between, particularly against all-conquering England at Twickenham in April.

However, a third place finish in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations, and most importantly qualification for next year’s Rugby World Cup, ensured they had wind in their sails coming into this autumn block.

Breen returned from an ACL injury during the Six Nations, and has enjoyed getting a run of Test matches under her belt, particularly as Ireland have ended the calendar year in impressive form with five wins out of their last seven Tests.

“It’s huge for us. Three wins from four (including the Australia game) is absolutely massive and we’re not going to understate that. I think they weren’t easy wins either, we had to dig deep in two of them.

It really kind of backs up our process, and our belief in what we’re doing. We’re making massive steps forward as a team and we’re hoping to keep that going now for the next 12 months and beyond.

“We don’t want to just be competing against these teams anymore. We want to be able to have a crack off them.

“I think if we keep going on the same trajectory, keep building our confidence, keep building that momentum then, yeah, we’re looking forward to welcoming France to our shores next March.”

The Cork powerhouse played the full 240 minutes of Ireland’s inaugural WXV1 campaign, and also started the Belfast encounter with Australia. The USA clash marked her 25th cap, and she looks to have come back an even better player since her long injury lay-off.

Across the three rounds in Canada, Breen made 24 carries, 11 of which were dominant ones, carrying for 162 metres and gaining 68 metres. She made 49.4 post-contact metres in the heavy midfield traffic.

She beat five defenders and had one try assist, and on the defensive side of things, made 31 successful tackles, missing just three, and won two turnovers. She was decisive too as a leader, having taken over the captaincy from the injured Edel McMahon.

Asked about turning down a kickable penalty when level with the USA at 14-all, she said: “We knew we had them under pressure. We were building time in their 22, building time in the right areas of the park.

“I think they were two players down at that point as well (due to the yellow cards), so we knew it was going to be a set-piece.

“We just had a quick chat about whether we wanted a scrum or a lineout. The forwards wanted to maul it over, so we just fully backed it.”

The girls in green came from behind on three occasions to beat New Zealand, and trailed twice to the USA before pulling clear during the closing stages of Friday’s fixture.

Again the Irish bench helped the team to put together a strong finish, with five replacements entering the fray by the 63rd minute. Increasing pressure on the American defence yielded a penalty try and three yellow cards in all.

The second sin-binning, for Rachel Ehrecke’s deliberate knock-on, was swiftly followed by the lead score from Clíodhna Moloney, via a well-executed maul. Breen’s long pass then played in Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe for the 75th-minute clincher.

Bemand’s charges got on top territorially during the final quarter, and had a 56% share of the possession during the last 10 minutes. Their stand-in skipper could feel they were turning the screw, and they backed themselves to get those decisive tries.

“I think that period in the game, kind of 60-odd minutes, we knew that pressure would start to tell. The whole game we just wanted to play in the right areas, and eventually cracks started to show in their defence.

“We started to get momentum and, yes, they went down two players, but we just kept believing. We just kept sticking to what we wanted to do.

“We back our set-piece fully, and our forwards, credit to them, they absolutely nailed their job out there. Yeah, it’s tough going down to 13, there were absolutely opportunities there and we fully backed our process,” added the 25-year-old.