Ireland bullish about ending England's unbeaten seven-year Six Nations streak

Head coach Scott Bemand speaking during an Ireland Women's Rugby media conference at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Dublin. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Ireland head coach Scott Bemand believes his up and coming side can bring England’s 31-match unbeaten Six Nations run to a halt when the two teams meet in Musgrave Park in Cork on Saturday afternoon.

This is quite the claim, by any measure.

It’s just shy of a year since Bemand’s side shipped 88 points to the perennial Championship winners in front of almost 49,000 fans at Twickenham. They conceded 14 tries that day and lost by 78 points. So to say that Ireland could do a number on them now? Wow.

“Can we? Yeah, yeah, we believe we can. We talk about awe versus belief. It’s not as simple as just accepting that you don’t need to be in awe, but we have played against these girls before. Some of the girls play in the [English] PWR and rub shoulders with them regularly.

“Some of us have coached in that [English] system so we know every system has opportunities and flaws. So, they have got certain bits of their game where we know we need to deal with, certain bits where we need to be prepared to act physically, think fast.” 

Bemand drove home the point about how his players and his side in general has grown in the last 12 months. He mentioned their increased athleticism, power and overall fitness. And he’s right. The team now is unrecognizable to the version then, in so many ways.

Ireland finished third in that Six Nations, itself a huge improvement from the sixth spot and wooden spoon they held in 2023. They followed that up by beating world champions New Zealand and a top USA side in the WXV1s in Canada in the autumn.

A catalogue of bad handling errors cost them the chance to claim a rare win last month against the French, this tournament’s bridesmaids since England assumed their hegemony seven years ago, but they went on to hit a decent Italy team for over 50 points in round two.

Still, though… England’s winning streak in this event goes back to a win against Ireland in 2018 and that perfect record since has been built on an average of over eight tries a game. Their average winning margin in that spell has been 44 points.

England head coach John Mitchell has made no bones about using this tournament to fine-tune as many players as possible before their home World Cup late in the summer and he has handed game time to 34 in total across the opening two round to that end.

They trounced Italy for 40 minutes on the opening weekend before pulling up after the break, then hit Wales for 67 points in the Principality. Bemand has spoken of the need to make sure Ireland don’t let the visitors play this game on their own terms.

“It's not just around containing them, it's about us firing shots on our terms as well and we’re in a much better place now than we were. We want to be hard to beat. Stopping them getting the possession they want on their terms is a big part of that.

“Defensively, we’re getting better all the time. Attack-wise, we’ll get moments and we need to execute against that. We’ve been focusing on bits so that we’re not under pressure and bits where we need to get scoreboard pressure on them and then executing that.” 

 Ticket sales for the Musgrave Park game have been strong and the squad’s injury profile remains decent on the back of a down week last week, although Beibhinn Parsons still isn’t fit enough to make a claim for a run on the wing.

Five of the 23 that accounted for Italy play their rugby in the English PWR league. Dorothy Wall, who has confirmed she will be playing for Exeter Chiefs again next season, echoed Bemand’s confidence when putting distance between them and Twickenham last year.

“We knew that would come up. It wasn’t a great day whatsoever. There is a reason they are where they are in the world rankings and it’s pretty obvious to everyone that we are a different team than the one that played in Twickenham that day.

“They had the occasion in Twickenham that day. I don’t know how many people were there, 40,000 or something, but it is very different when we bring them down to Cork, that’s all I’ll say. We’re at home, in Munster and it’s passionate. We’re really up for it.”

The IRFU has announced the addition of two Test matches to Ireland's summer schedule, providing valuable preparation opportunities for Bemand's side ahead of Women's Rugby World Cup 2025.

Ireland will welcome Guinness Women's Six Nations rivals Scotland to Virgin Media Park on Saturday, 2 August before going head-to-head with Canada in their final warm-up match before Women's Rugby World Cup on Saturday, 9 August at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast.

The back-to-back Test matches will conclude Ireland's pre-season preparations ahead of their departure for England.