Ireland coach Denis Fogarty looking to crown Women's Six Nations with another away win

Scrum coach Denis Fogarty during an Ireland Women Rugby media conference at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Dublin. Photo by Tyler Miller/Sportsfile

Progress can be judged in lots of ways.

Points on the board are the most obvious but there are layers within games and performances that can be measured. Denis Fogarty refusing to bleach his hair again would be another.

The Ireland scrum coach promised to go for the bottled blonde look last year if the team claimed a third-place finish in the Six Nations. When they did, well, what could he do but follow through and transform the locks?

Ireland have already confirmed a second straight third-place finish in the latest Championship table with wins in Italy and Wales, regardless of the result in Edinburgh when they face Scotland in the last round of matches.

Win, though, and they will have won three games as opposed to two in 2024 – all of them on the road – while confirming the impression of a team that has streaked way ahead of Scotland, Italy and Wales and closed the gap on England and France.

Either way, Fogarty won’t be making any grand gestures.

“I have absolutely no promises whatsoever,” he laughed.

“I have been asked by the girls about ten times what they can do to me and I was there, ‘I am not a toy, I am not doing anything else for ye’.

“The bleached hair was enough. It took me four months to grow it out. It was a nice piece to do and I am glad we came third but the bleaching was enough.”

The Scots managed to produce scorelines against the English and French that were largely similar to the Irish but a three-point defeat of Wales in round one and a loss to the Azzurri stand in stark contrast to Ireland’s heavy wins against both.

Scott Bemand’s visitors really should be leaving the Hive Stadium at the weekend with another good day’s work behind them with their attitude to a 40-point haul in Newport last time typical of the elevated expectations they hold of themselves.

“Overall, the 22 errors where we just handed the ball back to Wales, that was quite frustrating for us and equally for the players. They were very frustrated around that and it shows the growth around that and they know they can deliver on-pitch.

“We put them under pressure quite a lot in training during the week, but for some reason it doesn’t come off sometimes during the game. It’s good that they were like that. The coaches will always be slightly frustrated but the players want to put it right this week.”

Loosehead prop Niamh O’Dowd is available again having sat out the win in Newport last weekend but winger Beibhinn Parsons will now go through the full Six Nations without an appearance as she continues to recover from her second broken leg in 2024.

The Edinburgh game will bring a long ten-week spell in camp to an end and usher in a well-earned break before the squad reconvenes at the start of June for the build-up to the World Cup in England which starts in late August.

Any fatigue, mental or physical, will only be exacerbated by the fact that this is a short, six-day week, but Fogarty is confident that the Ireland players are ready to sign off for now with a performance that franks their recent improvements.

“When you look at it, there are no games in May. So every game counts for them in building that depth within the squad and making sure we finish on a high and go straight into a World Cup campaign in a good place.”