Foundations set for Ireland women to become competitive again
While there is still a long road left to travel on the basis of their display against Wales last weekend, John McKee is confident the Ireland women’s rugby team can eventually get to a point where they are competing with the top sides in the international game.
Despite the presence of several players in their matchday squad who are now under full-time contracts with the IRFU, Ireland were on the receiving end of a 31-5 reversal to Wales in the opening round of the Women’s Six Nations at Cardiff Arms Park last Saturday. Their opponents had a similar set-up coming into the 2022 Championship when 12 players within Ioan Cunningham’s selection for the tournament were on professional deals.
The WRU significantly ramped up their commitment to women’s rugby earlier this month and Cunningham is now in a position to call upon 25 players that are on full-time contracts with the union.
The IRFU aren’t yet at this stage with their women’s programme, but McKee believes the right processes are in place for Ireland to progress up the ladder.
“To put a timeframe on it [when Ireland will be back to their competitive best], you can’t, but I’ve got a lot of faith in what I’ve seen since I’ve been here. In the processes that are coming through and in the young players that are coming through, and the environment that they’re training in. That the process can be accelerated and then develop a match programme around that,” the Ireland senior coach remarked at a press conference in the IRFU’s High Performance Centre on Tuesday.
“There has already been talk about maybe playing some extra games in the summer. It’s not just about being in a programme here and not playing much high level rugby. It’s about complimenting the programmes here with a level of rugby that they can play.”
Long before coaching the Fiji men’s national team at the 2015 and 2019 World Cup finals, McKee had a three-year stint as an assistant to Michael Bradley at Connacht (2002-05). Thanks to this, the New Zealander has a firm understanding of how tough a place Musgrave Park is to play in.
Although France are firm favourites in advance of their second round clash this Saturday at the Cork venue (kick-off 3.15pm), McKee is hopeful the combination of home advantage and a six-day turnaround for their opponents following an opening day win over Italy can work to their benefit.
“You look at it from France, they’ve got a six-day turnaround and they’ve got to go all the way to Cork. It’s a tough week for them and hopefully they really dislike that! We can’t say that is going to give us any points on the board, but they’ve got a tough preparation for this week,” McKee added.
“We’ve just got to make sure we get everything right here in our days here and we’ll travel to Cork on Thursday ready to put in a top performance.”