O’Connor: We’ll bring the fight to Les Bleus
Daire Walsh
The odds might be firmly stacked against them, but Ireland women’s back-row Hannah O’Connor is adamant that her side aren’t approach Saturday’s Six Nations encounter with France at Musgrave Park (kick-off 3.15pm) as a damage limitation exercise.
Following a 31-5 defeat to Wales in the opening round of the Championship at Cardiff Arms Park, Greg McWilliams’ outfit will enter this weekend’s duel as massive underdogs. This would most likely have been the case regardless, as Ireland have recorded just three wins and one draw from 30 previous encounters with Les Bleus.
Team captain Nichola Fryday was unused replacement when Ireland last tasted victory over the French in 2017, while current assistant coach Niamh Briggs was a key figure in triumphs at the expense of their forthcoming opponents in 2009 and 2013. Although the gap between the two teams has widened since those meetings, O’Connor isn’t interested in simply keeping the score down in Cork on Saturday.
“We are not playing a Six Nations match to have that attitude. Our squad is full of youth and exuberance with a mix of senior people. There’s a beautiful balance, but we’re not in this competition to make up the numbers or take our step off the gas as we go into this week,” O’Connor said from the IRFU’s High Performance Centre yesterday.
“It’s very much head down and see what we can do. It’s those little tweaks that we feel as a squad we are very confident about, and can make a big difference for us and how we go about our business on Saturday.
“We prep to the best and we want give a better account than what we did last week and if we do that we feel we can be confident we can put in a performance we can be proud of.”