Ireland 'looking to improve again' against Canada after historic Black Fern win

ONTO THE NEXT: Ireland’s Erin King and Liana Mikaele-Tu'u of New Zealand. Pic: Travis Prior

Beating New Zealand still stands as the ultimate achievement in rugby. England have dominated the women’s world rankings in recent years but it is the Black Ferns who continue to come up with the goods when a World Cup swings around.

Reigning champions, the Black Ferns have won six of the last seven tournaments. It’s bald statistics like this that make Ireland’s shock 29-27 defeat of the Kiwis in the opening round of the WXV1 tournament in Vancouver last weekend so remarkable.

Yet the job doesn’t get any easier for Scott Bemand’s squad in Canada.

Hosts Canada are next up in British Columbia. A side that beat New Zealand, in Christchurch no less, back in May in the PAC4 tournament. That was a result that pushed the game’s aristocrats out of the top two in the rankings for the first time since they started in 2016.

So there is weight beyond the words when Ireland speak of the size of the task facing them as they look to follow up that first-up win with defence coach Hugh Hogan putting next Saturday night’s game into the appropriate context.

Good and all as they were against New Zealand, they just can’t stand still now.

“A massive positive for us was our calmness, our clarity. We didn’t deviate from the plan. We had belief in what we wanted to go about at the weekend. We knew New Zealand would test us, and we were stretched at times, but we were able to handle them.

“We were able to take opportunities. Test rugby comes down to moments. We gave ourselves chances by creating moments and the players had the courage of their convictions to go and take that moment [to score the winning try] at the end of the game.

“There are always things that we can improve on. There are aspects to our defence that can get better. There are layers to the attack that we are going to try and build in over the course of this competition. So we are looking to improve again this week.” 

Keeping their heads will have been the first challenge.

The time difference being what it is, the players really only saw the approaching avalanche of messages as Ireland woke up on Monday morning and Vancouver was going to bed but they seem to have reset with little fuss.

The Monday was spent on a whale-watching expedition, the sight of humpbacks and orcas making a welcome change from the hours spent training and dissecting video footage of training sessions and games involving them and their next opponents.

Canada opened their tournament by again replacing New Zealand on the second rung of the rankings courtesy of a seven-try 46-24 whopping of France at the same BC Place Stadium where Ireland upset the odds.

The two sides will now shift their focus to the Langley Events Centre 40km to the east in the Greater Vancouver area with Hogan all too aware of the job at hand as the Six Nations contenders look to go again.

“They went through the PAC4 competition undefeated back in May and they did that by beating New Zealand and Australia. They are in a place where they are showing real confidence in how they play the game.

“They are obviously hosting the WXV1 competition so they are at home as well and they had a very strong performance against France. We definitely have great respect for the way they play the game and we know it is going to be a very physical battle. We’ll have to front up.”