Vision and investment needed if Ireland are to close gap

Ruaidhri O'Connor

Money is tight for the IRFU but hard-working players need more support as they chase a moving train

Ireland captain Ciara Griffin, centre, and her team-mates after France scored their eighth try during the Women's Six Nations match at Energia Park in Dublin. Photo: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

April 19 2021 02:30 AM

Saturday was a window of opportunity for Ireland’s women. Their performance and win over Wales had generated interest, for once they were playing on a weekend free of the distractions of the men’s game. The visit of a strong French team was being broadcast live on RTÉ and the sun was shining in Donnybrook. It was all set up.

Unfortunately, they fluffed their lines badly and they’ll beat themselves up for their malfunctioning lineout, their lack of defensive line-speed, their lack of patience in attack and the costly penalty count.

All they can control is their own performance and their performance wasn’t good enough to land a blow.

They’ll wear that defeat as they return to their workplaces and colleges this week. Then, they’ll look to put it right against Italy and finish third in the Six Nations. Behind the goal at the Bective Rangers end, the two men ultimately responsible for the team’s performance watched the gap between the haves and the have-nots manifest itself in plain sight.

David Nucifora might be feeling good about the role he played in bringing Simon Zebo back to Munster last week and the men’s decent Six Nations finish, but the limitations of the women’s team fall under the performance director’s brief.

Anthony Eddy is the man he selected to run the Women’s XVs and sevens programmes along with the men’s sevens set-up.

When Nucifora arrived in Ireland in 2014, the women’s team were on the cusp of putting together a run to the World Cup semi-final, beating New Zealand along the way. In Eddy’s first year in 2015, they won a second Six Nations in three years.

In the intervening years, Ireland have gone through a large dip and appear to be coming out the other side, but in the time they’ve been wallowing others got their houses in order. England have gone full-time professional, New Zealand and France are on part-time deals.

The leagues in England and France are set up to drive standards. Those two have established a huge gap between themselves and the other four in the Six Nations and there are growing calls to disband a tournament that has been full of imbalanced scoreboards.

Are Ireland content to be a second-rate international force in the women’s XVs game? Certainly, the players who are dedicating so much of their lives to the cause don’t see it that way, but right now they’re way off France and England.

The talent identification programme in place for the sevens programme has helped in finding strong players from other codes and this window has afforded the highly-regarded Adam Griggs a free run at the entire pool of players.

However, while the sevens programme will land you good players from No 6 to 15, it won’t produce athletes primed to play in the tight five, and that’s where Ireland fell down on Saturday.

Of course, this is a strange international window for a team who have had two games in 12 months. There’s been very little club rugby played on this island for the duration of the pandemic and while they’ve trained hard, you cannot replicate the experience of facing France.

The IRFU have just completed a redundancy programme and are in the midst of a cash-flow crisis, so this is not an opportune time to go looking for money.

They will argue with justification that the men’s professional game pays the bills, but as the national governing body there is an onus on the union to set the national women’s team up to succeed even if that means taking some money away from the men.

Why has it fallen on a couple of former players and a privately-run rugby academy to set up a national U-20s team?

How has it come to pass that someone of the calibre of Lynne Cantwell has been allowed to slip through the net and become the head of the South African women’s programme?

What is the long-term plan for the Women’s All-Ireland League and the interprovincial championships and what can be done to bridge the gap in quality between the domestic and international arenas?

Imagine the reaction if the men shipped a similar scoreline in a Six Nations match. There’d be calls for a root-and-branch review. Perhaps the male players, who share a union with their female counterparts, could use their powerful voices to effect some change.

Vision is needed. Ireland is operating a wait-and-see policy on professionalism, but this generation of players can’t afford to do that.

The focus is qualifying for the 2022 World Cup and, despite Saturday’s defeat, they’re more than capable of getting there. Their target is to finish in the top six in New Zealand. They’re also expected to win a Six Nations in the next two seasons. Those goals, written in 2018, look unrealistic now.

If they finish in the top three of the 2023 Six Nations, they’ll qualify for the new Women’s XVs series – an annual event that World Rugby hope will increase the competitiveness and profile of the best of the women’s game.

Ireland must want to be part of it, but can players who are juggling their sport with full-time jobs manage that commitment?

Nucifora has dismissed the idea of professionalism as “a distraction” and said growing the number of girls and women playing the sport is the focus.

Turning on a tap and simply paying the players won’t solve all the issues, there is more to it than that.

While France have a bigger playing pool, their preparation, performance levels and athleticism didn’t happen by accident.

That Ireland couldn’t live with them was down, in part, to their own mistakes. But, in reality, unless the guardians of the game show vision and invest, they’ll always be fighting an uphill battle.