Time for a new era in women's rugby in Ireland

Results of independent review into World Cup qualification failings will be revealed today

Anthony Eddy has stepped down from his role as director of women’s and sevens rugby to pursue new opportunities. Picture: Inpho/Billy Stickland

Anthony Eddy and Adam Griggs, the two men most closely associated with the elite end of women’s rugby in this country in recent years, have now both moved on to pastures new. The structures in which they operated remain in place.

For now, anyway.

The IRFU will today publish the independent report it commissioned into last September's failure to reach the women’s World Cup which will be held in New Zealand later this year. This will begin to tell us if any change beyond the superficial is to happen. As it must.

Griggs’ tenure as head coach to the Ireland senior team ended after the defeats of the USA and Japan in November, just months after the unexpected and costly losses to Spain and Scotland in that qualifying tournament in Parma.

The Kiwi is now a provincial talent coach with Leinster.

Eddy followed him out of the building yesterday with confirmation from the union that the Australian has stepped down from his role as director of women’s and sevens rugby, the pandemic apparently having prompted a desire for new opportunities.

News of the latter’s departure landed on the country’s sports desks roughly three-quarters of an hour after an email from the IRFU bearing the details for the virtual presentation early this afternoon of the independent review into that World Cup debacle.

Led by former Wales player Amanda Bennett, the report will be ground-breaking in the sense that it is being published in full. All previous such efforts have been guarded jealously by the union with only key findings allowed into the public domain.

That has led to criticisms in the past, maybe most notably when performance director David Nucifora held a briefing on the failure of the men’s team at the 2019 World Cup and pointed the finger of blame squarely at then head coach Joe Schmidt.

An interview given by Eddy late last year sounded a similarly discordant note when he focused on the performances of the players and not any perceived faults on the part of the union when looking back at that traumatic tournament in Parma.

With both Eddy and Griggs now having moved on, and Philip Browne replaced as CEO by Kevin Potts since January, the only individual of note left in the same role when the women’s game was unravelling the last few years is in fact Nucifora.

Where will the buck stop this time? There is also the fact that a wider review into the nuts and bolts of the women’s game is to follow in due course and there isn’t any doubt but that structures and systems at all levels need a thorough medical.

A dedicated, high-ranking official with no brief other than the women’s game seems a no-brainer but then that still leaves them trying to get around a numbers game that serves both sevens and 15s when there simply aren’t enough girls and women yet playing.

New head coach Greg McWilliams last night named a 38-player squad for the upcoming Six Nations. Nine are uncapped and yet we are already years into a rebuilding stage. This is still where we are at.

Incidentally, two players not in the latest squad are experienced centre Sene Naoupu and hooker Cliodhna Moloney. The latter described Eddy’s comments as “slurry” last year and was prominent in player talks with government in recent months.

Nine of the 15s squad that fell short of the World Cup were contracted players but all of them work off sevens contracts. A number of those who featured this year when the squad reached a first ever World Series final, in Seville, will continue to double-job.

The idea of contracts for some 15s players has been consistently been met with pushback so far and let’s not forget that the women’s sevens didn’t make the Olympics in Tokyo either.

There is no prospect, it seems, of the IRFU loading all or most of their resources into one or other but the fact is that they are falling far short of their own markers in both codes.

There is a lot to do here but the odd mea culpa wouldn’t go astray for starters.

Eddy drew deserved ire for that ill-fated interview a few months back when it helped prompt a scathing letter sent to government on behalf of five dozen past and present female players in which they expressed their utter loss of faith in the IRFU and its leadership.

His comment that money had been “thrown” at the game then was tone-deaf. So was the IRFU’s initial, bristling response to the players’ letter and Browne’s remark last November about how it’s not possible to ‘conjure something out of nothing’.

Anyone with a scintilla of knowledge about organisational change will know that the best environment for undertaking it comes on the back of seismic events and/or a change of leadership. The IRFU and its women’s game have experienced both.

There will never be a better time than now.