IRELAND WOMEN'S RUGBY TEAM: Role models strutting the world stage

There are any numbers of stories and statistics by which you could measure the progress made by an Irish women’s rugby side which, in Paris this evening, will fight for the right to feature in their first World Cup final.

Old tales of packed lunches and lodgings on gym floors have been told and retold, most of them in considerable detail around the period 18 months or so ago when Philip Doyle’s side were in the process of claiming a first Grand Slam title.

A handful of the same emerged yesterday lunchtime as players and coaches mingled in Marcoussis with a still small but burgeoning Irish media that, like the public at large, is warming to this group of high achievers.