Wafer believes another third place finish represents improvement on 2024

Aer Lingus ambassador Aoife Wafer. Aer Lingus, Official Airline of Irish Rugby for 10 years, will bring #HomeAdvantage to Ireland’s Guinness Women’s Six Nations Championship this year, by supporting the team’s travel to away games in Italy, Wales and Scotland. The airline will also proudly fly many of the Irish team's dedicated supporters to these away games. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Aoife Wafer believes finishing third in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations can still represent an improvement on 2024, even if it only matches Ireland’s closing position from 12 months ago.

Last Saturday’s 49-5 defeat by England in Cork was Ireland’s second loss in three championship matches having narrowly succumbed to France in the opening round in Belfast. Yet Scott Bemand’s side more than held their own for the opening 50 minutes having led 5-0 through an Amee-Leigh Costigan try on 24 minutes and kept the defending champions and world number one-ranked English scoreless for 34 minutes.

It marked a distinct improvement on the 88-10 hammering by the Red Roses in 2024 and with Italy having been put to the sword by Ireland in Parma in round two, back-rower Wafer believes her side have already shown the strides made in the last 12 months as they look forward to a trip to winless Wales in Newport this Sunday afternoon.

With Scotland to follow in Edinburgh in the final round on April 26, the Irish will retain third place behind the still unbeaten English and French if they wrap up the 2025 campaign by emulating last season’s outcomes with back-to-back wins over their Celtic rivals, improving their two wins and three defeats last season.

“Yeah, I think it can be a better Six Nations campaign than last year’s,” said Aer Lingus ambassador Wafer.

“Finishing third, it would obviously technically be the same result but competing with the likes of France, I know we probably should've beaten France, and then competing with the likes of England who are the best in the world currently and competing with them for 50 minutes; obviously the scoreline got away from us then, but we want to close that gap on France and England and pull away from the others and I think this campaign can be really successful still, for us.

“We showed against Italy that when we're on it, we're really on it, and we showed for the first 50 minutes of that England game that again, when we're clinical and we get chances that we can really put teams under pressure.

“And again with the French game we could show that we can compete with the best in the world and we could beat the best in the world when we're on it. Unfortunately that day it didn't go our way but you look at the likes of that New Zealand score, like their current World Cup champions, England aren’t. So yeah, it just shows that when we're the best of us that we could compete with Tier One nations and hopefully then when it comes to a World Cup, we can beat them.” 

Ireland had kick-started their 2024 championship with a resounding 36-5 win over the Welsh at Virgin Media Park in round three following opening defeats to France and Italy yet Wafer said the Irish squad would not be underestimating their hosts at Rodney Parade this weekend.

“I think we still have to respect Wales. I know the competition probably hasn’t got off to the start they wanted but Wales are very dominant if you let them be and you can see it in some of their games. Their set-piece, their scrum, even their maul, their pick-and-go game can be very dominant if you let them be.

“So, I think we will still need to be that defensive element and just saying ‘no’ to crossing our line and not letting them over but I’m excited to see what the plan will be this week in terms of attacking because I reckon we could get after them in a couple of spots.” 

Wafer, 22, said Ireland could be “very proud” of their opening 50 minutes against England last Saturday, having restricted them to just one first-half try, before the Red Roses found their feet and ran in six tries for their bonus-point win.

“We’re a group that pride ourselves on learning fast and we’re a group that last year lost to them 88-10. I think it’s evident the amount of growth that’s happening to this group.

“We can feel it in the stadium the crowd getting behind us and young boys and girls chanting for us. You could tell that England weren’t very comfortable with what we were doing in the first 50.

“And they were making mistakes that they don’t usually make. The likes of dropping the ball or kicks that they don’t usually make. They weren’t as accurate as what they usually were. And we just basically said ‘no’ and we were like, ‘you’re not crossing our line and that’s that’.

“Thirty-five minutes in, they obviously get that maul try but we’re known for not dropping our heads anymore and we kept fighting and we kept fighting for each other. We probably had too many penalties at set-piece and let them get easy ins into the game. It’s something that we’ll look at, we’ll build on. And we can’t wait to get going into Wales now.”