Ireland boosted by return of Cliodhna Moloney for crunch battle with Wales

While Ronan O’Gara greased the wheels of his La Rochelle players in his home county before they travelled to Dublin for their game with Leinster, the Ireland squad bunkered down in Cork yesterday for their Women’s Six Nations game with Wales today.

Not that Cork cooked up a magic formula for the Ireland women last year; they lost their two games with France and England there by a combined margin of 98 points.

The Irish squad do have a rebel in their midst for their return to Cork this time.

The gap in Cliodhna Moloney’s international playing CV from November 2021 until two days ago, when she was named on the bench for today’s game, is an unwanted mark on the IRFU.

It was noticeable when it came to the group photograph before the captains run at Musgrave Park yesterday that Moloney was seated right beside co-captain Edel McMahon in the prime front-row seats. Her place in the centre should never have been taken from her.

What Moloney’s return appears to have done is given a huge bump to a side that perhaps needed it after losing their two opening games to France and Italy.

There was genuine excitement about Moloney’s recall from players like her friend and Exeter Chiefs team-mate McMahon and fellow Ireland co-captain Sam Monaghan, who says Moloney’s “got this dog behaviour which you need on the pitch”.

And Ireland will need to play with a bit of bite. There’s a ticking clock with each of Ireland’s home games because we don’t know when the countdown will finally end on their now seven-game Six Nations losing streak.

Think back to the men’s Six Nations equivalent in Dublin in February between Ireland and Wales and the predictability about an expected home win in that build-up. How boring!

You want jeopardy? You have it here as today’s game is an early shoot-out to avoid the wooden spoon. Ireland and Wales are the two winless teams left, with the visitors currently bottom of the table.

But Wales’ sixth place position is a bit of a false economy.

Sure, they’re on a five-game losing streak after defeat in their three games in tier 1 of the WXV last October, but they are still more than just a bit punchy.

Remember the first game of last year’s championship at Cardiff Arms Park and the beginning of another end for Ireland? Wales had the four-try bonus point wrapped up after 30 minutes as they bullied Greg McWilliams team in a 31-5 win.

Here’s a vignette of the opening three minutes: Wales win their first turnover after 50 seconds, 67 seconds later, they win a scrum penalty against the head, 63 seconds later, Alex Callender scores a try off a line-out maul. It was a brutal opening three minutes and a harbinger of what was to come for Ireland in a damaging championship.

“I think we’re in a very different place to what we were last year. That first half definitely took the wind out of us a bit,” Dorothy Wall recalled this week about last year’s game. “We have to have faith in our set-up, our system, the coaches, the work we’re doing, everywhere. I’d like to think it wouldn’t be like that this year.”

A Wales advantage over the past few years has been their cohesion. One third of the Wales team to play Ireland today is made up of the Gloucester-Hartpury players who won last year’s Premier 15s title. They’re at the key positions, including out-half Lleucu George, the centres captain Hannah Jones and tighthead prop Sisilia Tuipulotu, who was player of the match against Ireland last year. She will also be in a key battle with Linda Djougang at scrum-time today.

But Monaghan, their Gloucester team-mate, believes Ireland won’t be caught cold again this year.

“I know last year they were in four weeks before we were training. They had a warm-up game against South Africa. That’s where the flip side of that is this year. We had more prep going into these games.

“They’re a cohesive side, they play with each other a lot. They’ve got good connections, a bulk of their players are at Bristol and Gloucester. We know what we’re going into.

“We’ve a good few players that play in the Premiership, so we know what it is like to play against them and play with them.”

Despite the strengths of this Wales team, a case can certainly be made for Ireland. The last few weeks should have helped fix the mistakes and unforced errors they made at the RDS.

The line-out? Well Wales have the second-best defensive line-out in this championship, so Ireland’s needs to be solid. The return of McMahon will also bring back her chop tackle into play as Monaghan pointed out this week and also her leadership.

The sevens players have had more time to bed in (another interesting match-up will be on the wing between sevens speedsters Jasmine Joyce and Béibhinn Parsons). The danger of a losing run, though, is the desperation for a win can put the blinkers on playing smart.

“We talked a lot about our mindset with Seán Ryan, he’s our head of high performance,” Wall explains. “We do a lot of work off the pitch on how we stay in a regulated zone, that we can still compete and execute things in high pressure environments, without tipping into red where we’ll give away penalties or not make the right decision because we’re panicked. We do a lot of work on the mental side of the game, too.”

Get the basics right and who knows what can happen.