Ireland shred all preconceived notions with victory over New Zealand
Whistle Match At Enya New And Including Via Of Victory: Breen Dalton, The Rich Against The Players, Sportsfile Aoife Celebrate Zealand Lam/world Of Final Picture: Ireland Rugby Wxv1 Moment Pool
There is a theory of evolution that scientists call punctuated equilibrium. It refers to periods of rapid change, where species change in the blink of an eye rather than in the slow, gradualised manner that came to be the accepted thinking.
Ireland’s women’s team seems to have morphed into something new and wonderful overnight, their 29-27 defeat of New Zealand’s world champions in the WXV1 competition in Vancouver rewriting their entire code and utterly shredding preconceived notions.
Dorothy Wall seemed to capture the enormity of it all. Insane, she said, time and time again. Suddenly, they look comfortable in the most testing of environments, capable of surviving and even thriving.
This is a team that finished bottom of the Six Nations in 2023 with no points and holding the wooden spoon. Ireland didn’t even feature in the last World Cup. They lost a clutch of key, veteran players and the IRFU had been slated for its handling of the women’s game.
Absolutely unbelievable scenes ☘️
— WXV (@WXVRugby) September 30, 2024
Look at what this result means to the Ireland players and staff 🫶#WXV | #WXV1 | #NZLvIRE https://t.co/9AW5UIn6ft pic.twitter.com/5CB5sudgu7
The glory days of a decade past, when the likes of Niamh Briggs and Fiona Coghlan were breaking glass ceilings and winning Six Nations and reaching the semi-finals of a World Cup, were an ever more distant and hazy memory.
And now this.
There were clear signs that the team was moving in the right direction. nA third-place finish in this year’s Six Nations was a marked improvement and one that qualified them for next year’s World Cup and the top tier of the WXVs.
Beating Australia 36-10 in Belfast two weeks ago franked that.
But the fear was that the graph was shooting up too fast, like a runaway stock whose value had nowhere to go but down when the ultimate tests came. Ireland were putting a hundred on Kazakhstan in the third tier WXV a year ago. Now they were facing the Black Ferns?
Even the likes of Coghlan were worried. The former captain admitted as much after this historic win in Canada, referring back to the imperfect and nervy defeat of the Scots in Belfast in that last round of the Six Nations as reason for her concern.
“What a turnaround even from the win against Scotland,” she posted on X on Monday morning. “I thought based on that performance that WXV 1 would be a step too far, delighted to be proved wrong.” We all were.
This very point had been put to head coach Scott Bemand after the Scottish win in April: that maybe a place in WXV2 with the likes of the Scots might have been a more favourable ‘reward’ than a hop and a skip up two grades to the very top.
“We’ve always said that we want to move faster than anybody else,” said the Englishman then, “so this is a great opportunity to pitch ourselves against New Zealand, Canada and Australia if that’s how it rolls out.”
Scoring five tries against the Black Ferns was impressive in itself. So was limiting them to three points while down to 14 players in the third quarter. And nabbing the lead back with less than two minutes to go showed pure guts.
None of it happened by magic.
Bemand’s predecessor Greg McWilliams didn’t last long in the role and, while his spell in charge was fraught, there were at least some building blocks laid down that served the team going forward on both sides of the chalk.
The IRFU’s belated embrace of professional contracts for the XVs team, allied with greater resources that were pumped into the supports needed to make the team competitive, were the low-hanging fruit that just had to be plucked.
The other non-negotiable was the need to find and blood more players and quickly. The loss of experienced hands such as Nicola Fryday only heightened that need. The turnover of players has been nothing short of dizzying at times.
Through all this, bedrock was laid in the form of players that have become cornerstones. Not least up front in the likes of Neve Jones, Linda Djougang, Dorothy Wall and the back row trio of Aoife Wafer, captain Edel McMahon and Brittany Hogan.
Dannah O’Brien has made the No.10 her own and Aoife Dalton the same at inside-centre.
The Six Nations just gone saw an Ireland team that displayed less change than for years before. There were four changes for round two but only four combined for the next three fixtures as the team and its various units began to gel.
Then they played Australia this month and the collective was supplemented by Stacey Flood and Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe who had played sevens at the Olympics. Eimear Considine has returned to the fold too and Erin King looks to be a superstar in waiting.
Look at the bench against the Black Ferns and you will see four players with just four caps between them. Lose and that’s perceived as a weakness. Win and it becomes a sign of the potential still to be squeezed in the weeks and years to come.
Everything about this team reads different now.