Bemand: Ireland to fire a shot at England

Ireland head coach Scott Bemand says his team won’t be concerned with damage limitation when they come up against England in the Women’s Six Nations at Twickenham on Saturday.

The No 1-ranked team in the world has inflicted heavy defeats on Ireland in recent years including a 48-0 loss in Cork last year and a 69-0 defeat at Welford Road two years ago.

Bemand says he expects Linda Djougang and Aoife Wafer to be available to play after both forwards came off “with a bit of a bang” in their 36-5 win over Wales at Musgrave Park last Saturday.

Despite England’s superiority, Bemand insists his Ireland side will not be playing it safe in Twickenham this weekend.

“Probably not damage limitation! We’ll go after firing our shots, getting our game out there,” Bemand said after training at the IRFU’s High Performance Centre yesterday.

“We’ll hopefully advance our game and what our game can tolerate. We know some things the English will go after and we know that we’ve built an environment and a playing style that can tolerate it. We’ll try and get some shots out there.”

Bemand, who spent eight years working as an assistant coach with the Red Roses, believes it’s up to the other nations to close the gap on England who are going for their sixth Six Nations championship title in a row this term.

Ireland’s bonus-point win over Wales was their first win in the championship since April 2022. Bemand says the team have taken a lot from that five-try performance.

“It’s nice to take the confidence from winning. We’ve got to enjoy winning, that’s fine. But we find if you’re stable and consistent with how you review and preview and go after your own performance, you can kind of not get rattled if you pick up a loss.

“And the trick is not to get too giddy if you pick up a win. There are still bits in the game that we left a bunch of points out there last week. So we’re still going to go after the bits that are going to continually make us better.”