McWilliams accentuates positives despite defeat
Women’s Six Nations
Ireland 19
Wales 27
Daire Walsh
RDS
Ireland women’s head coach Greg McWilliams has called on his players to absorb the lessons from their Six Nations Championship defeat to Wales at the RDS on Saturday as they look to build towards a daunting challenge against France next weekend.
In front of a record home attendance of 6,113, Ireland twice held nine-point leads in McWilliams’ first game at the helm with Tipperary native Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe, Linda Djougang and Stacey Flood all scoring tries.
However, Wales physically dominated their opponents inside the final-quarter as 17 unanswered points helped them to end a previous run of seven straight Six Nations reversals.
“If you want to be playing at the RDS in front of 6,000 people, we’ve got to be good enough as a group to decide what our standards are like. First and foremost, if you look at the energy which the players had and lots of their action, as a coach you’d be so proud of it,” McWilliams explained.
“Now, it’s just a case of getting tighter and working at making sure that you’re tidier at looking after the ball. Particularly when you lose momentum because when momentum goes, you’ve got to be smart about how you play until you get that momentum back.
“The fact that we had the opportunity to have that lesson today, I’m delighted with it because it’s something now that we can tackle in France. It’s a good lesson for us.”
45-0 winners when these sides met in last year’s truncated Six Nations at Cardiff Arms Park, the hosts drew first blood on 17 minutes when Murphy Crowe raced clear of the Welsh defence off Flood’s pass out wide to touch down in the right-corner.
Limerick woman Nicole Cronin superbly added the extras from the touchline and even though the visitors responded with a Carys Phillips try off a line-out maul, Sam Monaghan’s outstanding offload released Djougang for a converted try that propelled Ireland into a 14-5 interval advantage.
Jasmine Joyce side-stepped over the line seven minutes after the resumption to bring fresh life to the Welsh challenge, but the home team remained on course to claim the spoils when Flood dotted down after executing a swift one-two with Clare’s Eimear Considine.
Yet a set-piece finish from replacement prop Donna Rose kept Wales in contention and in the wake of Considine’s sin-binning on 71 minutes, a second try from Rose and a breakaway Hannah Jones effort saw Wales pulling off an impressive win.
Like McWilliams in his capacity as head coach, it was also an unsuccessful first outing as captain for Nichola Fryday. The second row was an unused replacement when Ireland last defeated France in 2017 and she recognised improvements will need to be made from Saturday’s game if they are to have any chance of pulling off a repeat result.
“Our discipline let us down today so that’ll be a focus next week. You can’t give those penalties against France because they will crucify you for that. For us now, we have to go back and look at what we can implement for next week, and just take our learnings from this match,” Fryday said.
Scorers for Ireland: Tries – A-L Murphy Crowe, L Djougang, S Flood; Cons – N Cronin (2).
Scorers for Wales: Tries – D Rose (2), C Phillips, J Joyce, H Jones; Cons – R Wilkins.
IRELAND: E Considine; A-L Murphy Crowe, E Higgins, S Flood, L Mulhall; N Cronin, A Reilly; L Djougang, N Jones, K O’Dwyer; N Fryday, S Monaghan; D Wall, E McMahon, B Hogan.
Replacements: C Pearse for O’Dwyer, B Parsons for Murphy Crowe (both 54), K Dane for Reilly (59), A McGann for Hogan (62), E Breen for Mulhall (63), H O’Connor for Fryday (79).
WALES: K Powell; L Neumann, H Jones, K Lake, J Joyce; E Snowsill, K Bevan; G Pyrs, C Phillips, C Hale; N John, G Crabb; A Butchers, A Callender, S Lillicrap.
Replacements: K Jones for Phillips, S Harries for John (both 52), C Hope for Pyrs, F Lewis for Bevan (both 56), D Rose for Hale, B Lewis for Callender (both 62), R Wilkins for Snowsill (70).
Referee: K Hope (USA).