Crabb’s ready to put claws into Irish

Wales Women v Ireland Women Today. Kick-off 1.30pm, Arms Park

ROWLAND Phillips will be hoping the footballing ability of lock Gwen Crabb can help Wales end their campaign with a victory.

Wales won their first Test of the Championship away against Scotland last weekend after defeats to France and England either side of a draw against Italy.

Phillips has made two changes to the starting XV with Elinor Snowsill given the nod at fly-half and Alisha Butchers slotting in at blindside flanker.

Crabb keeps her jersey after impressing against Italy.She said: “Football was my sport since I was five. I was a goalkeeper and I was lucky enough to train with the Wales U17 squad.

“My handling skills transferred nicely across to rugby and I realised I preferred rugby so I decided to take it up instead of football.

“It’s been going really well for me. I got brought into the starting line-up because of injuries in the Italy game and I was lucky enough to keep the jersey.

“It’s been really good to get game time and experience at the highest level.”

Crabb added: “I definitely think we can come away with a win. We just need to do the simple things right and maybe correct a few of the not so good things we did up in Scotland where we were panicking. We are going in with confidence.

“It was a narrow victory against Scotland so we have been working hard.”

Ireland loosehead prop Lindsay Peat aims to right last week’s wrongs: “We’re just waiting to click. I made a huge mistake against France and that’s been a theme throughout for all of us. It’s a team issue and we’re trying hard to fix it.”