‘Our Back Row Can Pack A Real Punch’ – Bemand

There is no denying that Ireland’s back row ranks left a big impression on WXV1, with young flankers Aoife Wafer and Erin King both winning player-of-the-match awards and scoring five tries between them.

Brittany Hogan has been an ever-present ‘rock’ at number 8 over the last year, and head coach Scott Bemand described her as the ‘glue’, stepping up as vice-captain for the last two matches against Canada and the USA.

Captain Edel McMahon was at her influential best at openside flanker during their outstanding opening win over New Zealand, before injury curtailed her involvement in the subsequent games.

King has certainly made a big splash just four Tests into her 15s international career. Already an experienced Sevens campaigner, the 20-year-old scored her third WXV1 try and was the Mastercard player-of-the-match in Ireland’s 26-14 victory over the USA.

Asked about the early promise shown by King at this level, and the growing depth across the squad, Bemand said: “Erin is an outstanding player and an outstanding person. We’ve integrated some of the Sevens players back in to the Irish system, so we’re a ‘Team of Us’.

“We’re the Ireland Women’s programme that will do the best we can for Women’s rugby in Ireland. Erin’s a big part of that, she’s a bundle of energy.

“There’s still some bits to shape her game, some of the nuances of being an elite back row which she’s picking up. Every single session she’s got a bit better, and she continues to show that through these Test matches.

Suddenly now you’re building a back row. You’ve got Brittany who is the glue, who has been vice-captain for us for the last two games. You’ve got Wafer, you’ve got Erin, we’re able to pack a real punch, and there’s a few more girls coming back now.

“Derv (Nic a Bháird) returned to fitness and is getting more minutes slowly under her belt. We’ve got some injured players to come back in to add to the wider squad.

“So yeah, we’ve got some talent, we’ve got some experience and we’ve got some very, very good players coming back, so we’re hoping we can just keep growing the momentum.”

It makes Ireland’s three victories from four during this autumn block even more impressive when you consider that Méabh Deely, Katie Corrigan, Béibhinn Parsons, Aoibheann Reilly, Christy Haney, and Sam Monaghan – all starters against Scotland last April – missed this tour through injury.

Bemand spoke before the Australia game in Belfast about injuries giving others ‘a chance to step into a space and grow and own it’, and the desire to develop further depth so that come next year’s Rugby World Cup, they can have ‘three-deep in every position’.

The availability of King and five other Ireland Sevens Olympians from Paris 2024 was a significant boost, and the returning Eimear Considine was one of the players to grasp the opportunity with both hands, starting all four Tests on the right wing and scoring two tries.

There were debuts in Belfast for Ruth Campbell, Olympians King and Vicky Elmes Kinlan, and converted prop Siobhán McCarthy, while Cork-born prop Andrea Stock (pictured below) won her first cap against WXV1 hosts Canada.

In addition, there were first international starts for Niamh O’Dowd, Fiona Tuite, Emily Lane, and King, and hooker Cliodhna Moloney – a try scorer against Australia and the USA – made her first start in the green jersey since November 2021.

As well as the bread and butter of their set-piece work, Ireland’s front row contingent contributed three tries from lineout mauls during the memorable autumn campaign.

Ever-present props O’Dowd and Linda Djougang were also real workhorses as carriers and tacklers, the latter making 23 out of 23 tackles and winning three turnovers during the clash with the Eagles side.

While they will have been frustrated with their performances during the opening 40 minutes against both Canada and the USA, Ireland have shown an ability to outlast some teams of late with an assuredness around their game-plan and decision-making, and increasing levels of firepower in attack.

They ‘won’ the second halves of their last five encounters – 15-7 against Scotland, 19-5 against Australia, and 12-10, 5-0, and 19-0 against their WXV1 opponents – either by forcing their way over the try-line at key stages, or courtesy of Dannah O’Brien’s clutch kicks late on.

Reflecting on how they came from behind to beat the USA, Bemand explained: “At half-time we’d sort of had a couple of hold-ups, and they made three line-breaks and scored two tries. It really was about sticking to the process.

“It really was about understanding that we were on the right trajectory, and we just needed to be a little bit sharper in some of the areas.

“What we did, we just regrouped, went back to it, and understood where we played rugby and understood what pressure would look like on them.

“They started giving away more and more penalties, that gives you ‘ins’, and you get ‘ins’ and we’ve now got a set-piece that can ask questions.

“We were good for our points in that final quarter, it was basically pressure starting to tell, but we had to earn the right to get there.”

It was the middle of October last year when Bemand’s coaching tenure began with a record 109-0 win over Kazakhstan in WXV3. Roll on exactly twelve months and Ireland are now holding their own against, and beating, some of the best teams in the world.

It has been an incredibly rapid rise for this group, reflected in their world ranking improving from 11th to sixth in that time which has them in the second band of teams for Thursday’s 2025 Rugby World Cup draw in London.

There is a good deal of Test match savviness within the group that toured Canada, with the likes of McMahon, Djougang, Considine, Neve Jones, Dorothy Wall, Hogan, and Moloney all on 25-plus caps now. Djougang leads the way with 41 Test appearances.

There is a strong cohort of 20-to-26-year-olds in the group that are also hitting high standards, whether that is backs O’Brien and Aoife Dalton, two of the debutants from the 2022 tour to Japan, or the dynamic duo of Wafer and King in the loose forwards.

The exciting thing is there looks to be a lot more still to come from this squad, especially as the new-look coaching team seeks to build on this first tournament together, and those injured players return to drive the competition for places up even higher.

“Obviously as you go into World Cups, you get a little bit more time before that anyway, you get a pre-season leading into it. We know that with time, we get better,” acknowledged Bemand.

“We had to balance how many pre-season matches did we want to play, and we made a decision to compete hard with ourselves and then have one Test coming in.

We finished this competition in really good physical health, in terms of how many bumps and bruises we pick up in a competition. Unfortunately we had ‘Tricky’ (Edel McMahon) and Katie Heffernan who picked up bumps.

“But we’re a pretty robust group now, so more time usually lets you get more training identity, more robustness and resilience within the group compared to the game that you want to play.

“So, I think we’re pretty well placed for that. I think we’ll continue to grow that, and it kind of puts us in a really good position to now go, okay, there’s some more layers to this that we can get to when we get a little bit more time pre-World Cup.”