‘At times we looked a little shell-shocked’ – Scott Bemand insists Ireland can take ‘learnings’ from England rout
Ireland head coach Scott Bemand is interviewed after the Women's Six Nations Rugby Championship defeat to England at Twickenham Stadium in London, England. Photo by Juan Gasparini/Sportsfile
Ireland head coach Scott Bemand says his players looked “a bit shell-shocked” during England’s 88-10 demolition in the Women’s Six Nations at Twickenham today. The Red Roses ran riot as they scored 14 tries to inflict their second heaviest defeat on Ireland in the history of the women’s tournament.
The world number one side ripped Ireland apart defensively with Ellie Kildunne and Abby Dow both scoring hat-tricks as Ireland missed 61 tackles.
“Once momentum started moving away from us, at times we looked a little shell-shocked. But that’s fine. You see teams that went on to become good teams needed to learn to play occasions whether it be finals, semi-finals, big games and today was a big game for a youthful group,” Bemand said in the post-match press conference.
“Would we have predicted a margin like that? No, probably not. Unfortunately it is how it went and there’s some bits that we can definitely control better in terms of momentum and when it starts to slide away from you. But as I say the age profile of this group, the experience of this group, they’ll take a massive amount of learnings from that. And it’s about applying and still being confident to apply it next week against Scotland.”
Ireland did manage to stem the tide briefly when they were awarded a penalty try midway through the second half which captain Edel McMahon believes is something they can take encouragement from.
“We came into this game quite ambitious to go at England. And just those momentum swings probably caught us off-guard a bit but we finished that game out to the end. Heads didn’t go down. We’re trying to problem-solve on the go and that’s what was quite encouraging from a young group,” McMahon said. “We were trying to question what we do next, how do we change the momentum. We’ll bring that into Scotland. We’ll take that we took 10 points on England as well and we’ll work hard and be very honest in our reviews and how we can fix that to take onto Scotland.”
Bemand doesn’t believe the manner of the defeat will affect the players’ confidence going into next weekend’s final game against Scotland in Belfast.
“We’ve got a really big game to get excited about next week. England are probably the market leaders at the minute in world rugby with an occasion that we’ve got to learn to play. And we’ll dust ourselves down and come back better for it next week.
“I’ve every confidence in our ability to learn from it. The momentum we’d gained over a month in camp and the games previous to this doesn’t dissipate in one performance.”
“We came second best today but we won’t dwell on it long. The group showed me enough over the past few weeks that we’ve got the ability to put our game out there."
