Doyle pleased with Ireland's victory from behind

The scrum queens kept their 100% record intact with a battling victory over Wales in round two of the 2014 RBS women’s six nations.

The 14 points to six victory over the Welsh sets up a Triple Crown match with England at Twickenham after the men’s sides square off.

Unlike seven days ago and the historic 59-to-nil victory over Scotland, the Welsh dragon roared at Ireland, leading 6–0 after 25 minutes.

“I said it openly that Wales would give us a completely different challenge than Scotland,” coach Philip Doyle told breakingnews.ie afterwards.

“The Scots didn’t really contest the rucks,” explained Doyle. “The Welsh brought the game to us, I think we dealt with them well!”

Robyn Wilkins' two first half penalties were just reward for the adventurous visitors who made three personnel changes following their surprising loss to Italy in week one.

“We put ourselves under some unnecessary pressure,” Doyle said, disappointed with some aspects for his sides performance in tough conditions.

“It was a bit unnecessary to be going across the pitch into a wind, we could have easily used a different tactic, but we’ll look at that and then we’ll fix it,” explained Doyle.

Playing against the swirling wind in the opening period, the six-point gap spurned Ireland into life, with Niamh Briggs' penalty halving the deficit on the stroke of half time.

“I was delighted the way we responded to being six points behind,” Doyle admitted with a ruthful smile. “You could feel the momentum starting to shift.”

“It was hard to retain possession, Wales were kicking into the bottom right hand bottom corner,” explained Doyle. “We worked our way into a fantastic scoring position and thankfully they coughed a penalty and I was absolutely delighted to go in 6-3 at half time.”

The hosts grew in stature in the second half, a strong wind to their backs Niamh Briggs levelling proceedings four minutes after the restart with a penalty.

Ireland pinned back Wales through the second half, and Heather O’Brien displayed quick sense and trickery on the hour to produce the game's only try.

“I was thrilled with Heather’s try from the base of the scrum,” said Doyle – but he would not say whether it was a training-ground routine.

Scrum half Larissa Muldoon had slowed the game down only for O’Brien to appear from the blindside, scooping up the ball and heading home.

The Welsh kept working into the strong breeze and Briggs' additional time penalty sealed the Irish victory infront of a near-capacity Ashbourne crowd.

“We knew they would attack us well in the line out,” Doyle added wrapping up. “Which they did taking out our main jumpers”

“We worked hard at it, they were never going to give it to us easy but we showed hard effort to claim a win.”

Ireland women’s team can seal a triple crown victory in their next RBS Six nations game against England on February 22nd in Twickenham stadium.