Tom Tierney hopes to see women’s rugby take off

Tom Tierney predicts a huge future for women’s rugby in Ireland following the latest Six Nations triumph in Scotland on Sunday and hopes to see the game strengthen further if a bid to host the 2017 World Cup succeeds.

Head coach Tierney watched his charges demolish Scotland and win the title for a second time in three years and is confident it will contribute to Ireland’s growing fortunes.

“A bid has been put in to host the World Cup in 2017, hopefully that would bring the game on hugely if we were lucky enough to get that. It’s a question of waiting and it would be brilliant for womens rugby in Ireland. I think the game is going to grow and prosper, get bigger and doing things like the girls did on Sunday will add to it.

“Womens rugby has come a long way given a half a dozen years ago or so they were being hammered by the likes of England. The quality of player around now, both the senior players who have been around for a while and the younger ones, is much higher and the identification process trying to get new players in continues at pace.

Tierney was full of praise for the Irish squad in lifting the title, especially after losing at home to France earlier, the team they ultimately beat into second place. The French game was a wake up call, there were some good things to come out of that defeat (5-10), once we got over the disappointment of losing we knew that we would take it on the chin and we bounced back with the win at home over England and then a great away win to Wales to set ourselves up for the thrashing of Scotland.”

It was Tierney’s first involvement in womens rugby and he admitted yesterday it had been a totallydifferent challenge to deal with the fairer sex.

“The biggest difference was there would be a lot more questions, which, in a way, was good for me. They would ask a lot more questions men would do, so it pushed me a bit further in trying how to explain things, how to break things down from a technical point of view.

“That would have been the main difference, but the quality of the rugby player available to me is in a very similar state to the men to be fair. Their grasp of the game is a huge plus, they’re very quick learners. I suppose the biggest challenge was to get across my philosophy on the game. I tried to play an open free-flowing ball in hand stuff type of game, trying to get that style was, I suppose, something new to the girls. They had a different way of playing, and the most rewarding thing was how they played and destroyed Scotland by keeping the ball in hand.”