Bemand: 'They’re trying to do something to move the game forward and encompass a whole world piece'

The extended stint training and playing in the Middle East this last few weeks will be an undoubted help to the squad and to the staff as Scott Bemand, formerly an assistant with England, gets his feet under the table as head coach

READY FOR SPAIN: Head Coach Scott Bemand speaks to the team. Pic: ©INPHO/Martin Seras Lima

The spiral in fortunes suffered by the Ireland women’s national rugby team has delivered endless lows. Among them was the loss to Spain in Parma just over two years ago and the damage it did to what ultimately proved to be futile hopes of making a World Cup.

Lea Ducher’s 72nd-minute try at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi was the killer score in a game that finished 8-7 to the Iberians and the teams will meet for the first time since that tie when they contest the last round of the WXV3 in Dubai tomorrow.

Change has been wholesale on both sides. Only half-a-dozen of the Irish players who featured that day are on duty now with a squad that has so far obliterated Kazakhstan and Colombia in the depths of the third tier.

Only five of the Spanish players from September of 2021 were involved when they saw off Fiji last Friday but there will be no escaping the shadow of that previous entanglement when these two meet again.

“I don’t want to be in that position again but I feel like we’re quite well prepared to play Spain this time around,” said Irish co-captain Edel McMahon. “We watched what they brought in the last few games and we aren’t taking the opposition for granted for a second.

“Although the scorelines looked fantastic we have been looking at how we have been performing and this week in training has been another step up again internally. We are pushing each other with the awareness of what is to come this weekend.” 

Spain are a point behind Ireland in the WXV3 table having also nilled Kenya in their opening fixture so anything other than a defeat will give Scott Bemand’s Ireland a rare title and McMahon admits that the prospect of any silverware is a motivator.

The extended stint training and playing in the Middle East this last few weeks will be an undoubted help to the squad and to the staff as Bemand, formerly an assistant with England, gets his feet under the table as head coach.

The event itself, while new and welcome given the paucity of Test fixtures on the women’s side, is dilute by the fact that the winner of this game will not earn promotion to the WXV2 next season. That depends on Six Nations results in 2024.

Still, Spain should still mark a step up in terms of the challenge awaiting an Ireland team that has scored 173 points and 27 tries in their opening games. A “much-needed challenge,” Bemand admitted.

“You can only beat what is put in front of you and something we have been talking about since the beginning really is our own identity and [those games] gave us a bit of a chance to build that.

“We have trained pretty hard so, regardless of who we have been playing against, we have managed to keep our foot down in training and hold ourselves to standards we believe we will need when these bigger challenges come.

“We are at a point now where we relish a bit more and that comes with a pressure that a final can bring. We’re in a good place now.” 

He has named a strong side for the occasion with Dorothy Wall and Molly Scuffil-McCabe replacing Eimear Corri and Aoibheann Reilly respectively but the bigger picture has also come into view this week via World Rugby’s new calendar.

Changes to the men’s international game hogged all the spotlight but the women’s game has been handed a dedicated calendar of its own from 2026 on and the promise is that it will align the domestic and the international sides of the game.

The Six Nations will remain the core attraction on this side of the world but there will also be an eight-week window set aside in August and September for warm-up games that will lead into the three divisions of WXV rugby.

“They’re trying to do something to move the game forward and encompass a whole world piece,” said Bemand. “It will take some bedding in. It seems like they have a reasonable plan and I’m sure more clarity will come out for what these tournaments look like.

“We will certainly to play more teams that we normally don’t get to play against and will keep pushing hard to be where we need to be and where we should be. That should give us more opportunities to play teams that will test us and stretch us.”