Eilís Cahill glad to make impact on Twickenham debut

Ireland will take the positives from their Six Nations trip to London. 

BOW: Ireland players Eilís Cahill, left, and Katie Whelan after their first caps for Ireland in the Women's Six Nations Rugby Championship. Pic: Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile

Eilís Cahill just wanted to give her team-mates a lift when she got her chance to add to Ireland’s cause at Twickenham on Saturday and the replacement prop did just that as she put in a performance to remember on her international debut.

The 24-year-old UL Bohs and Munster prop was part of a bench contribution praised for its impact by Ireland head coach Scott Bemand as England’s momentum was halted during an evenly-matched second half in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations opener. The Irish had trailed 21-0 at the interval but rallied well after the break to draw the second 40 minutes 12-12 and Cahill played a pivotal role in the recovery process, coming on after 59 minutes and earning her side a scrum penalty at her first engagement.

“I was just sitting on the sideline, I was thinking, what's the first thing I can do to lift these girls up, to give them a bit of a boost,” Cahill said, and that's all I was thinking about when I was coming on.

“It was such a great experience today. Loved the atmosphere, loved the whole lead-up to the game. It's just been incredible.” 

Cahill nearly capped her maiden Ireland appearance with a try and both captain Erin King and the head coach were impressed by her efforts on an encouraging day for the Irish set-piece.

“To have Eilís come on and do the job that she did, she should be incredibly proud of herself,” King said, while Bemand spoke of her all-round performance.

“You could see her getting on the ball at the end there, in the 22,” he said. “Every time we do a compete training session or she played in the Celtic Challenge, she scored. She's hard to stop, and she knows her way to the try-line. So I wouldn't have been surprised if she scored. She got close, didn't quite get there.

“You want some firepower on your bench. You need depth in the squad to compete. As a 36, the squad that we've named for this competition, we believe we've named a stronger 36 than we had in the World Cup. On the back of that, we believe we selected a stronger 23 than we had access to in the World Cup. And obviously getting Dorothy Wall and Erin back is a massive part for us. You need your best players on the pitch.

“As we go forward, we want to have stronger benches, and you also like to select accordingly.

“We want finishers to come on and have impact. And I thought we saw that today, and as we go through the competition and this year and into next, I'd like to keep looking at growing that so that you can come on and go longer and deeper into games, which you need to do. Once we start cracking this World Cup contender, this top four, we're going to need to be in the game. And it's going to be the last 10 minutes to start with the winning or losing of these games.”