Ireland focusing on layers and players as evolution continues

Scott Bemand saw his side well beaten by an impressive England in Cork on Saturday.

FUTURE PROOF: Ireland head coach Scott Bemand talks with the media after the game. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady

Ireland 5 England 49 

Rural Berkshire may seem like a curious place to start a match report on a game played in Cork. Bear with us because what we saw on Saturday was an Ireland team making another step forward on a journey that still has miles to go.

And so to Wellington College, half-an-hour’s drive southeast of Reading.

It was here on Friday where an Ireland team inflicted a 21-0 defeat on their English hosts in the U18 Six Nations Festival. A week earlier and the same teams met at the IRFU’s high-performance centre in Dublin with the Irish claiming a 26-19 win.

These are notable results given England’s production line and their status as the best senior team in the world as we approach the summer’s World Cup in their own backyard. And, of course, given the need for Ireland to keep building strength in depth.

Ireland senior coach Scott Bemand spoke of two things after this Six Nations loss. Layers and players. One is short-term, the other needs a longer lens. So Ireland leaving England with the “bagel”, as the commentator called it, on Friday is encouraging.

“There’s a big part starting a couple of years ago in terms of the WNTS [Women’s National Talent Squad], the U18 pathway, the U20 pathway,” said Bemand. 

“So there’s people coming through and there’s results being produced down there. And it's class.

“Not every one of those players is going to come through but you want the fours and fives of each group to come through and be able to bed-in with the senior group quickly. The quicker we can do that, the quicker … we can keep adding to the senior group.” 

The route from Berkshire to the senior roster isn’t a long one.

There are players in Bemand’s current squad who were playing for their country at the top grade in their late teens. The plan is that those joining from the underage ranks from here on in will find a group even further down the line.

Losing by 44 points and conceding seven tries is not, on the face of it, a sign of positivity to the uninitiated, but Ireland shipped twice the number of tries and 88 points when losing to England in Twickenham in last year’s Championship.

Such skeleton facts don’t even hint at the encouragement the team can take from their first-half performance two days ago when a 25th-minute try from captain Amee-Leigh Costigan gave them a 5-0 lead and left the opposition scratching their heads.

England were frustrated at every turn for most of that half. Ireland tackled ferociously, jackled intelligently, kicked strategically and enjoyed a modicum of luck before a converted Morwenna Talling try gave the perennial champions a slim 7-5 half-time lead.

This was pretty much England’s strongest team in a competition where they are mixing and matching very deliberately in order to future-proof their roster for that World Cup bid. That in itself is recognition of how Ireland have improved this last 12 months.

And Bemand could see that this was far from a perfect Irish effort.

The scrum and the lineout was under severe pressure and there were a handful of small errors, such as players being offside in front of the kicker, that can be cleaned up as they turn to their last two games away to Wales and Scotland.

And then there are those layers he spoke about. Bemand is only in his second season with the squad. If this was a car being built then the engine, the wheels and the chassis are already in place. Now is the time to fine-tune it, to make it purr.

Ireland were powerless to stop England when the favourites found their rhythm after the break. Disrupting those waves of pressure, forcing the opposition into terms of their own making, is the next step for this evolving team.

“We obviously defended a reasonable bit to start with. Then how can we change the picture? Three or four times we probably kicked the ball away. I would have fancied us to have had a look at ball-in-hand in that second-half. That’s coming.

“There’s a competence piece. There’s a confidence piece in terms of recognising the picture and then changing the picture so once England feel ‘okay, we can defend this’ or they’re anticipating that we’re going to kick back, we can change the picture, ball in hand.” 

Ireland: S Flood; A McGann, A Dalton, E Higgins, AL Costigan; D O’Brien, E Lane; N O’Dowd, N Jones, L Djougang; F Tuite, D Wall; B Hogan, E King, A Wafer.

Replacements: S McCarthy for Tuite (48-55) and for O’Dowd (57-67); G Moore for Tuite and A Reilly for Lane (both 56); V Elmes Kinlan for McGann, C Moloney for Jones and N Fowley for O’Brien (all 59); C Haney for Djougang and R Campbell for Wall (both 71).

England: E Kildunne; A Dow, M Jones, T Heard, J Breach; Z Harrison, N Hunt; H Botterman, L Atkin-Davies, M Muir; M Talling, A Ward; Z Aldrcoft, S Kabeya, A Matthews.

Replacements: S Bern for Muir, K Ford for Atkin-Davies, A Cokayne for Botterman and L Packer for Hunt (all 52); R Galligan for Talling, M Feaunati for Kabeya and H Aitchison for Heard (all 62); H Rowland for Breach (67).

Referee: A Groizeleau (Fra).