Beibhinn Parsons back on familiar ground as Ireland look for first Six Nations win

HOME COMFORTS: Beibhinn Parsons is looking forward to a first ever Championship game at the Dexcom Stadium. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady.

Ireland’s experience of playing in front of 75,000 fans is behind them but the big-game experiences aren’t nearly done yet in this women’s Six Nations.

Saturday brings with it a first ever Championship game at the Dexcom Stadium when Scott Bemand’s side takes on Italy, and the week after offers up a tough but tantalising game against the French at Clermont’s Stade Marcel Michelin.

Round four will see Ireland face Wales in Belfast and a standalone date with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium will bring the curtain down on their 2026 tournament in mid-May. Plenty to be excited about there.

For Beibhinn Parsons, this next game in Galway will be a personal highlight.

The winger has played at the ‘new’ stadium twice before, one of them in the Celtic Challenge. She trained there every Tuesday for weeks on end with the Clovers and it’s a source of great memories from her underage days.

Parsons, Aoibheann Reilly and Meabh Deely were part of a storied Ballinasloe side that faced Westport there in Connacht finals. Still only 24, it’s a decade now, give or take, since she first togged out at what was the Sportsground.

“We heard that the Clan Stand was sold out and I say for half of it, that's my family or my friends or cousins or this and that,” she said on Wednesday. 

“Everyone I've talked to said that they're going so I can't wait.”

Over 8,000 tickets have already been sold for a game that will be capped at in and around 12,000. It’s a big occasion in every sense for a side that is looking to make up for some shortcomings against England’s world champions in Twickenham last week.

England's Ellie Kildunne and Ireland's Beibhinn Parsons in action. Pic: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire.

Ireland lost by 78 points on their previous visit, in 2024. The margin this time was just 21. That’s undoubted progress but a flurry of individual and systematic errors in the first-half meant that the visitors were never actually ‘in’ the game.

The bulk of their good work was done in second-half garbage time and Parsons was honest enough to admit that she is looking to impose her game more this week against Italy given her own performance “left a lot to be desired”.

We hear a lot about accountability in internal team meetings but there is an admirable honesty and transparency in coming out publicly and saying all that. So, was it the occasion, just how the game unfolded or what?

“There's a lot of moving parts, and there's a good few people that felt a similar way, that they didn't impose their game the way that they wanted to. I do think that it was a big occasion, but I actually don't think that was why.

“I think we were really revved up as a squad, really ready for all that. So I'm just going to attack this week, and we all have as a squad. We've had a really tough training weekend. We're ready to rip in.” Prop Jane Clohessy will sit out the remainder of the tournament after breaking an arm but second row Sam Monaghan and Aoibheann Reilly are both training after missing the Twickenham opener and there are no other injuries to report.

The dynamic is very different this week.

Ireland lost to the Italians in 2023 and 2024 but produced their best performance of the Championship in this round 12 months ago when putting 50 on the Azzurri in Parma. They will be favourites to claim another win on home soil this weekend.

“There’s no running away from it,” said backs and kicking coach Gareth Steenson. “It’s good. We think we're at this point now as a group where we can have that conversation with each other.

“The girls were disappointed last week. There’s no point in pretending that they weren't, but they understand that they were going to be better coming out the other side. The most frustrating thing from last week for a lot of them was they felt that they didn't fire shots.

“They’ve had that experience now, and they've realized now how best to go and fire these shots when it comes to putting game plans together. They've been part of the game plan development as well. They have been really good this week.

“Yeah, there's pressure because of course we're at home, we want to get results. Two years ago, we didn't get the result [at home to Italy]. So we want to put that right as well.”