Bemand proud of effort in defeat to France

IRELAND head coach Scott Bemand hailed his team for a gritty defensive display in Le Mans as France were held to a hard-fought 38-17 win in the opening round of the Women’s Six Nations.

The French ran in nine tries in a 53-3 hammering of Ireland in the corresponding fixture in Cork last year, but Bemand’s new-look squad delivered a much improved display at a heaving

Stade Marie-Marvingt.

The hosts made an ominous start with scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus sniping through for an early try and when Marine Menager raced away for another try later in the half, it was looking like another rough day for Ireland.

But the visitors continued to front up in defence and even though the home side crossed for a further three tries after the break, Irish efforts were rewarded with late tries from Aoife Wafer and Aoife Dalton.

Bemand was proud of the side’s battling display. ‘I think we wanted to come here and draw a bit of line in terms of what the performance would look like,’ he said.

‘First and foremost, when you come to France, you want to be hard to beat. I think the defence is starting to show what it can do and what it could possibly evolve into, what it wants to be about.

‘I think the girls hung in there for the whole game, scrapping away and under quite a bit of pressure at times. That was a bit of a standout.

‘I think 32 minutes in, it was 173, so we know the French get off to a fast start and they did but they didn’t score again for a good bit. Even in that period, we had a bit of momentum. When we got to the areas were we’d like to play a bit more, the set-piece creaked a little bit but that’s stuff that we can work out.

‘We know that Sam (Monaghan) is coming back into play, going forward so, yeah, a lot of learnings. If you’re not

winning, you’re learning,’ added Bemand.

Italy are next up on the schedule and this Irish side will take heart from their much improved performance ahead of that clash at the RDS on Sunday.

Bemand expects to have a full squad to select from, despite a bruising game in France.

‘No, we’ve come through in reasonable health,’ he added. ‘This isn’t a one-game competition. We want to get some minutes in people. We’ve got Italy coming to our shores next week and we have to make sure we’re in fine fettle for that.

‘Look, we want to give people time to show what they can do with next week in mind as well.’

Ireland captain Edel McMahon was proud of her teammates for fronting up against a potent French team.

‘France scoring early didn’t turn the heads down. We turned the screw and got up the field,’ said the Exeter flanker. ‘I think we executed our game plan quite well at times but just to touch on what Scott was saying, we weren’t clinical in our set piece and trying to exit.

‘If you want to compare it to last year, we certainly had a game plan and we stuck to it. We get ourselves up the pitch and got two scores. We put pressure on them.’

With a sizeable crowd set to descend on the RDS next weekend, McMahon hopes this performance has inspired a lot of supporters back home.

‘We’re here to compete in the Six Nations,’ she added. ‘We’re ambitious. We can stay with teams.’