Bemand: Whoever We Get, It’ll Be An Interesting Challenge

The draw will take place on Thursday and can be watched live on BBC One’s The One Show, airing from 7pm, and globally it will be streamed live at 7.20pm on RugbyPass TV.

The Ireland Women (sponsored by Aon) were ranked 11th in the world last October before lifting the WXV3 title in Dubai, and were 10th overall before winning five of their last seven Test matches to move up to sixth in the global standings.

Speaking about the World Cup draw, Ireland head coach Scott Bemand said: “Whoever we get, it’s going to be an interesting challenge. We want to be in World Cups, we want to be competing against the best teams out there.

“I think what we leave here (the WXV1 tournament in Vancouver) knowing is that there’s games there that we can win and we’re expected to win, and we don’t fear that.

“There’s games that might be against tier 1 nations that now we don’t go into with fear, we’re going in to put a performance out there and if that’s a winning performance then great.

“So, we want to get to knockout stages, we want to put our best performance out there, and I think we’ve got a group now that believe they can.”

Ireland closed out Bemand’s first season in charge by beating Wales and Scotland to finish third in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations, and in the process qualified for next year’s World Cup in England.

It also earned them their debut in the top tier of the WXV competition, and Bemand’s charges, buoyed by the try-scoring form of flankers Aoife Wafer and Erin King in particular, more than made their mark in Vancouver with impressive victories over New Zealand and the USA.

They join newly-crowned WXV2 champions Australia, whom they defeated 36-10 in the Irish Rugby 150th Anniversary Test in Belfast recently, Scotland, and Italy in band 2 for this week’s World Cup draw.

The top band contains back-to-back WXV1 winners England, who have now won 20 matches on the bounce, second-ranked Canada, New Zealand, and France.

The USA dropped down to the third band after three WXV1 defeats, alongside Wales, Japan, and South Africa. Band 4 is made up of new WXV3 champions Spain, runners-up Samoa, Fiji, and Brazil.

The top four teams in the rankings will be placed into band 1 and prepopulated into the first position in each pool. The remaining 12 teams will be drawn into bands 2, 3 and 4 based on their rankings, and drawn one by one.

Meanwhile, as the dust settles on a thrilling autumn block for Ireland, Bemand was able to reflect on the tangible progress made by the squad. WXV1 left them with a number of work-ons, but also with a renewed sense of confidence to take into the upcoming Six Nations.

“A year ago we looked at where we wanted to be. There’s a big bit in getting people to believe and understand what was possible. What we’re starting to do now is build an evidence-base that says we can do it,” he explained.

“Enya (Breen) just said we don’t want to just survive against these teams, we want to thrive. So France turning up, first game of the Six Nations now, we should be able to look at ourselves and say, ‘right, that’s a game that we can get after’.

We’ve got games that we performed reasonably well in during the last Six Nations but those games were at home. We’ve now got to do that on the road. The competition doesn’t sit still, things keep getting harder and harder.

“But we’re starting to now understand and can actually evidence that we can come through hard games, games where we’re out in front, ball-in-hand games, games where we got to show a bit of tenacity.

“All the time we’re just growing what we do and who we are. I’m delighted. How would I sum it up? We’re front-foot, we’re front-foot now, and our job is to keep that momentum going on the front foot.”

Having not qualified for the 2021 tournament, this will be Ireland’s first involvement in a Women’s Rugby World Cup since hosting the 2017 event in Dublin and Belfast.

As well as an extra emphasis on the Six Nations in terms of the build-up to England 2025, the Celtic Challenge, which will run from December to March with an expanded 10-round league season, provides valuable game-time for international players and emerging talent.

Ruth Campbell, Katie Whelan, Katie Heffernan, and Katie Corrigan helped the Wolfhounds to win last season’s Celtic Challenge, and were rewarded with their first Six Nations call-ups. Corrigan made her Ireland debut and scored three tries during the 2024 Championship.

Bemand added: “We break now in this (calendar) year. The girls, some will return to the UK, some will play Celtic Challenge which is an unbelievable opportunity for us to get our training ID to more players, to further grow the depth.

“But when we all come back together, it’s not to take a backward step from where we are now – understanding what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been doing it.

“I think there’s a real hunger in the playing group to elevate from where we are now, so that’s what we’re going to go after. We’re going to keep taking people with us.

“We want people talking about Ireland rugby and becoming, over time, a World Cup contender, so hopefully we can keep that trajectory going.”

2025 WOMEN’S RUGBY WORLD CUP DRAW BANDS:

Rankings in brackets –

BAND 1: England (1), Canada (2), New Zealand (3), France (4)
BAND 2: Australia (5), Ireland (6), Scotland (7), Italy (8)
BAND 3: USA (9), Wales (10), Japan (11), South Africa (12)
BAND 4: Spain (13), Samoa (15), Fiji (17), Brazil (42)