FOLLOWING PREVIOUS OUTINGS at the RDS and Virgin Media Park in the earlier rounds of the tournament, Brittany Hogan is excited to find herself in familiar surroundings for Ireland’s final game of the Women’s Six Nations tomorrow afternoon.

Just like in the 2022 edition of the Championship, the Irish will finish off this year’s campaign with a closing day showdown against Scotland at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast. From the small village of Killinchy in Co. Down, Hogan is one of just two Ulster natives in the Ireland starting line-up for the game – the other being Ballymena woman Neve Jones.

She wasn’t involved two years ago when a try and conversion from Enya Breen got Ireland past the Scots with a single point to spare, but it won’t be her first time lining out at the Ravenhill venue.

Having featured there for a Combined Provinces XV in a 19-0 win over a Wales Development XV in February 2023 during the inaugural Celtic Challenge, she returned to Kingspan in the colours of the Wolfhounds for the second season of the same competition earlier this year and scored a try in a 41-10 success against Brython Thunder.

“I’m well acquainted with the pitch. I’m well acquainted with the surroundings and where the nearest coffee shop is even! It’s nice to know my surroundings. That’s my home, so it’s really nice,” Hogan said in a press conference from the IRFU’s High Performance Centre earlier this week.

“I’ll be able to have a lot of my family come up as well because I’ve got a lot of young cousins who can’t do that travel, so it’s really nice that I’ll hopefully have a lot of family support as well.

“I kind of said to my family ‘I’m playing an international game in Belfast in the Kingspan, if you don’t come I’m going to be a little bit annoyed!’ So hoping that a good majority of them will.”

Still just 25 years of age, Hogan has been a part of the IRFU system for much of her adult life. After being handed a professional contract with the union’s sevens programme a few weeks shy of her 19th birthday in August 2017, she went on to make her debut in the Dubai leg of the World Series towards the end of the following year.

A 15s test bow eventually arrived in a behind closed doors Six Nations fixture against Italy in October 2020 and she will pick up her 23rd cap in the code at Kingspan this weekend.

“I’m well used to the HPC. It’s kind of my second home now at the moment. I just live around the corner as well. I’m well used to the set-up and playing both 7s and 15s the past couple of years. I’m part of the furniture now apparently!”

Yet it wasn’t always clear that rugby was going to be Hogan’s sport of choice. A prominent hockey player with both North Down Hockey Club and her school Down High School, she also played Gaelic football for RGU Downpatrick and Carryduff before eventually joining the ranks of Ballynahinch RFC.

In addition to featuring on the local LGFA scene in Down, Hogan also lined out for her native county at underage level. It might be tempting to think she could have been part of Down’s All-Ireland junior ladieis football championship final success over Limerick at Croke Park last August, but Hogan is adamant that playing rugby was the right decision for her in the long-term.

“Rugby wasn’t involved in my school and I wasn’t brought into my local club Ballynahinch until a little bit further on in my age and my teens. I didn’t actually start playing until I was 15. The only reason I did was because the training days happened to fall on the days that I was free. I tried a new sport and as soon as I tried it, I loved it. Never looked back then,” Hogan added.

“I don’t think it was that tough [a decision to focus on rugby]. It’s such a unique game and I think it just suits my physical characteristics much better than GAA and hockey. I just found the game for me and I seamlessly just went to it.”

Daire Walsh

Following previous outings at the RDS and Virgin Media Park in the earlier rounds of the tournament, Brittany Hogan is excited to find herself in familiar surroundings for Ireland’s final game of the Women’s Six Nations tomorrow afternoon.

Just like in the 2022 version of the Championship, the Irish will finish off this year’s campaign with a closing day showdown against Scotland at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast (kick-off 2.30pm).

They are a side that have caused them plenty of heartbreak in recent times, but co-captain Sam Monaghan remains confident Ireland can get the better of Scotland in the final round of the Women’s Six Nations Championship at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast this Saturday (kick-off 2.30pm).

In just her third international test appearance, Monaghan was part of an Irish team that suffered a last-gasp 20-18 defeat to Scotland at Parma’s Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in September 2021 – a result that ended their qualification hopes for the following year’s Rugby World Cup finals in New Zealand.

IRELAND HEAD COACH Scott Bemand still believes the Women’s Six Nations is a viable competition under its current structure despite last weekend’s heavy defeat to England.

England’s emphatic 88-10 triumph at Twickenham was their 28th straight Six Nations win in a run which has seen them claim five consecutive titles and close in on a sixth.

France will launch the latest bid to thwart England’s Grand Slam ambitions at Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux on Saturday, and even though the English and the French are currently a cut above the rest, Bemand is adamant the standard across the board at the moment is an improvement on recent editions of the championship.

“I think the fact that people are talking about it shows how much interest there is,” Bemand said on Tuesday. “Do I think it’s a viable competition? Yes, I do.

“People and the media generally want quick fixes for things. There’s investment going in, there’s focus being put on it.

“We said after the game last weekend, that arena and that atmosphere is something that our players have to learn. Now we’ve got that under our belt and come through, and we’re not derailed. We’ve reviewed it, we’ve parked it, we go forward.

“We like to think we can keep trying to bridge the gap. How quickly that happens? It’s great to see the teams outside England and France going hell for leather at each other and competing hard. Having been a part of it for a long time, the quality throughout is better. It’s our job to try and close that gap on those top two.”

While it wasn’t until November 2022 that the IRFU officially launched their Women’s XVs High Performance Programme, their English counterparts are much further down the line in terms of being a professional set-up.

However, Bemand acknowledged the women’s system in England was at a much different level upon his departure as lead coach in 2023 than it was when he first became involved in 2015, and he feels some of the steps the RFU took during that period can also be replicated in Ireland.

“I was involved in the England programme when it started professionalism really. I remember my first dealings with the Six Nations. The girls were teaching, were working as firefighters, they were out and having to come in from a place of work to do the Six Nations and then go back out.

“I remember sessions meeting Sarah Hunter at Bath University and we had some lights and we were trying to get a session with six or seven girls on a Monday evening. So, that started somewhere. That was six, seven years ago and things have quite quickly accelerated within that programme.

“There will be some pieces that we can say ‘well, we can use that intel’, we can use what worked and what didn’t, hopefully streamline and be more efficient about how quickly we can get there. The IRFU have already got some pieces in place which I believe will add to that. How quickly that gap is bridged remains to be seen.”

Although last weekend’s game in Twickenham was undoubtedly a setback, Ireland remain in contention for a top-three spot ahead of Scotland’s visit to Kingspan Stadium for a final round encounter on Saturday.

The result of the earlier kick-off between Wales and Italy in Cardiff will leave Bemand’s side with a clearer understanding of what needs to be done, but they will be in with a shot at securing World Cup qualification once the action gets underway in Belfast at 2.30pm.

The Scots have recorded victories against Wales and Italy thus far in the 2024 championship, and also led France before the visitors sealed a hard-earned 15-5 success.

This is more than enough to make Bemand wary of what awaits them in Ravenhill this weekend, but he is also confident his charges are capable of reproducing the form that saw them overcome Wales in comprehensive fashion in Cork less than two weeks ago.

“They rattled France in that game. Bryan Easson has been coaching them for a good while now. I’ve had many a battle with him. Their attack coach Matt Banahan, I played for a couple of years at Bath with him. We can kind of see some bits in their game that we would say are known to us. They’re well organised and they’re going to keep coming,” Bemand added.

“It’s going to be a great game, but we’re really confident in our preparation, in our identity and what we’re trying to do, and how that will hopefully put a winning performance out there.”

Daire Walsh

DESPITE ONLY being five caps into her international career, 21-year-old flanker Aoife Wafer is fast establishing herself as a key figure within the Ireland women’s rugby team.

After two previous outings off the bench, the Wexford native was handed her first test start by head coach Scott Bemand on the opening weekend of this year’s Six Nations Championship.

After crossing over the whitewash in that 38-17 reversal to France in Le Mans, Wafer was awarded Six Nations Try of the Round for her 14th-minute effort in last weekend’s bonus point win over Wales in Cork.

Additionally, having previously been honoured for a stellar display in a narrow loss to Italy at the RDS, her performance at Musgrave Park seven days ago also led to her being named Six Nations Player of the Round for a second successive time.

These are impressive accolades for someone so young, but as she explained at a press conference in the IRFU’s High-Performance Centre on Tuesday, Wafer has had an eventful journey up to this point in her career.

“I would have started when I was about six with Gorey RFC. I started with the boys team. It was actually funny because my two older brothers made a deal with my Mam that they could start rugby if they finished all their swimming lessons. So they started rugby and I of course, was left in the clubhouse, and I just wanted to get stuck in!” Wafer said.

“Mam always said that I was bit of a pest and I just kept arguing with her basically that I wanted to be out with the boys and I wanted to play. So one day she let me go out, so I didn’t really look back since then.

“Played from six to 12 years old with the boys and unfortunately girls can’t play with boys after that age group, so it was a thing of either I play with U15 girls at the time or I move to the U13 boys.”

Following some consultation, she ultimately opted to go for the former option and it was then that she first came into contact with one of her future international colleagues.

“That’s when I would have played with the likes of Natasja Behan. She would have been around 15 and I was 12. I was a scrum-half because I was really bossy and I was really small. I was stuck in scrum-half and eventually, then I went for south-east trials, which are a regional group with Leinster. I was 15 playing on the U18s team.

“I think I’d moved to Enniscorthy by this stage. I’d be playing with Katie Whelan, who’s also on the [Ireland] squad. Then Covid struck and got back eventually for post-Covid, Leinster U18s. I was part of the first interprovincial U18 Leinster-winning team.”

The Ballygarrett woman progressed from there and was eventually awarded a sevens contract by the IRFU after completing her Leaving Certificate examinations.

However, Wafer was later named in the Six Nations squad by then-Ireland 15s head coach Greg McWilliams for the 2022 edition of the tournament and — at just 19 years of age — she made her international bow as a 59th-minute replacement in a third-round showdown against Italy at Musgrave Park in Cork on 10 April.

This was a special weekend for the Wafer family as Aoife’s sister Orla made her first appearance for the Ireland U18s against France in Edinburgh the previous day.

Even though the games were taking place in different countries, Aoife and Orla’s mother Samantha ensured she didn’t miss a second of their respective debuts.

“She flew over to see her game and then back to see my game. Then back out to see Orla’s second game! She was a bit of a yo-yo between the two countries, so it was unbelievably special.”

Although she sat out the final few minutes of the Wales game after picking up a knock, Wafer has once again been selected alongside Edel McMahon and Brittany Hogan in the back-row for this afternoon’s tantalising showdown against England in Twickenham Stadium.

As well as playing in front of 45,000 plus spectators at the southwest London venue, Wafer and her Irish team-mates will be coming face-to-face with a side that have won their last 27 games in the Women’s Six Nations — dating back to the final round of the 2018 Championship.

The fact that five members of Ireland’s match day squad currently ply their trades at English clubs will be a welcome help for Wafer, but she has been doing plenty of work behind the scenes to familiarise herself with the Red Roses.

“For those of us who haven’t played in the Prem or haven’t played with these English girls, we do our homework too. We’ve watched back a lot of footage and seen certain trends and things that they like to do,” Wafer added.

“We acknowledge everything they can do and the power that they bring, but we also see our threats and we scored a variety of different tries at the weekend. That has really given us a pep in our step and a bit of confidence in our abilities as well. That we can really execute at that level as well.”

Daire Walsh