Ireland looking to 'fire some shots' against England in Twickenham

FIRE SOME SHOT: Head Coach Scott Bemand speaks to the team huddle. Pic Credit: Ben Brady, Inpho.

Today Wales, tomorrow the world? Not quite. Not yet.

Ireland’s cathartic defeat of the principality in Cork last Saturday, their first win in the Six Nations since 2022, will not be followed by another triumph against England in Twickenham.

The World Cup finalists remain streets ahead of the Celtic nations and of Italy. Even France appear to be a mezzanine level below the title favourites. The job for Ireland this week is to man the barricades and emerge with pride intact.

Damage limitation, you might say, although Scott Bemand didn’t take to that phrase.

“We’ll go after firing our shots, getting our game out there,” said the Ireland head coach. “Part of the stepped approach from where we were to where we want to get to, we’re going to need to win some moments in this game.

“We do that, you talk around breaking the game down and you go after your first moments. Then you’ve got to do it again and then you’ve got to … probably, not survive, but at some point you’re going to have the momentum against you and you’ve got to survive.”

Bemand wants his players to cause England some “headaches”, to register moments that can feed into the narrative of a side that has shown clear signs of improvement from the one that finished without a win in last year’s Championship under Greg McWilliams.

England, like Ireland, are operating under new management.

Kiwi legend John Mitchell is the man calling the shots now. There are some other new faces on the staff and some familiar, but the overarching job remains the same and it goes way beyond a Six Nations. Winning the World Cup is their be all and end all.

Their three Championship games to date have produced as many predictable landslides. Italy and Scotland were both nilled, but the Red Roses are not scoring with the same abandon as previous years. A glimpse of light maybe?

Mitchell’s predecessor Simon Middleton spoke before last year’s meeting with Ireland about the need for the gap between the two Six Nations tiers to be narrowed. It’s too early to say just yet if that process has even begun.

“Everything is relative,” said Bemand. “They haven’t gone past 50 yet in any of their games. Wales scored a couple of tries against them so it was never going to be an overnight piece. England have got to focus on what England do.

Head coach Scott Bemand takes Ireland to Twickenham on Saturday

45,000 tickets have been sold for it

Bemand would love to see something similar in the Aviva Stadium pic.twitter.com/GCYh00KPA2

— Brendan O'Brien (@byBrendanOBrien) April 16, 2024

“It's not up to them to play down to other teams, they’ve got to focus on them and it’s up to us to get after our own performances, our own playing pool, our style of play, how we train for it. Are we doing that? I would say we are.

“It was one of the reasons I took the job. If I didn’t think it was being gone after in a serious way I wouldn’t be here. Plaudits to the IRFU for supporting it. It has to start somewhere, it's making ground pretty quick because we know what we’re going after.”

There is no denying the need or the value of last weekend’s win. A solid defensive effort away to France in round one served notice of an upward curve and the team showed glimpses of superb attacking rugby before falling away to defeat against Italy.

They will go to England with a “spring in their step”, according to the head coach, who was able to report that Linda Djougang and Aoife Wafer have overcome injuries suffered in the last game to take part in training this week.

Winning 36-5 took most people by surprise. It took Wales 66 minutes to register their one and only score and Ireland kept their shape at the end when injuries mounted and they had to play for a spell with 14 players.

Bemand was delighted with all that: that they stuck to the gameplan. Repeating that in Twickenham, with 45,000 tickets already sold for the game and the hosts in attack mode, will be another task entirely for a side still in the process of discovering itself.

The head coach expressed the hope yesterday that Ireland’s women would one day host something similar at the Aviva Stadium. The Republic of Ireland women have done it twice lately, but Saturday is enough to have in their in-box for now.