In a section entitled ‘accelerating the women’s game’, the IRFU outlined how they were focused on “delivering a thriving provincial game, with a move towards four contracted provincial teams, where we are competing in cross-border, season-long tournaments.”

 A number of players on these shores have already had a sense of what this might look like through their involvement in the Celtic Challenge – a cross-border women’s competition featuring sides from Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

Ireland were represented by two teams – the Wolfhounds and the Clovers – in the most recent edition of this competition, but Briggs believes there is enough of a player base for the IRFU’s plan for the provinces to eventually be put into action.

“I went out to watch an U17s Munster girls team play against a Canadian touring team last week and I was blown away by the abilities of these players.

“There’s 30 of them there and there’s more on the sideline. That’s just from our point of view and I know all of the other provinces are doing a huge amount of work as well,” Briggs explained.

“I think we’ve got to go with a model where we’re pushing this now through and what comes afterwards, where we’re giving players a product where they can play rugby professionally across the island of Ireland. I think that is very exciting.

“I’m very aware of what high performance looks like. It’s a results-driven business and we’ve got to try and reach that top. We’ve also got to do it our way I think too and I do think that four provincial model is probably the best way to do it for us.”

For now, however, the Women’s Interprovincial Championship is the competition of choice for Munster and it began last weekend for them with an accomplished 29-22 victory over Ulster at Virgin Media Park in Cork. They will be back at the Leeside venue this Saturday for a mouthwatering duel with Leinster, who claimed the Interpros title in September of last year with an impressive final win against their arch-rivals in the ground more commonly known as Musgrave Park.

Briggs was head coach of Munster for that particular contest, but the Waterford native (who was in charge of the Ireland U20s at the Women’s Six Nations Summer Series last month) is now in an assistant role on a backroom team that is headed up by her former team-mate Fiona Hayes.

Although games between Leinster and Munster are always important affairs regardless of what grade it is in, Briggs is doing her best to play down the overall significance of Saturday’s fixture.

“I think this is just another game for us really and truly. There’s a Munster/Leinster rivalry, but the women’s game is different. We’ve got four really top teams now that are competing. We can’t be honing on game two, we want to keep driving to game three and game four,” Briggs added.