The emphatic nature of Ireland's loss to France on Saturday prompted much big picture debate - rather than simply a micro-focus on the Irish team's shortcomings on the afternoon.
On RTÉ's Against the Head on Monday night, ex-Ireland flanker Paula Fitzpatrick played down the notion the disparity between France and Ireland was one of professionals/semi-professionals v amateurs, noting that all the French internationals had jobs outside of rugby.
Rather, Fitzpatrick and Bernard Jackman pointed more to the structure of the grassroots game in both countries, alluding to Ireland's failure to properly grow the participation of the women's game, especially the XVs game.
Speaking to the media today, head coach Adam Griggs largely echoed the idea that greater participation at grassroots and club level in women's rugby was essential, if Ireland are to properly compete with the big two in the Six Nations.
While acknowledging that more needed to be done, Griggs pointed to the emergence of a number of younger players (Parsons, Wall, who began playing at a young age at Ballinasloe RFC and Fethard RFC respectively) who are products of the pathway that the IRFU wish to become the norm.
"Professionalism or semi-professionalism aside, you have to put it in context of where we're at at the moment," says Griggs.
"When you look at France and the way they've developed, and the same goes for England, their strength has come from the grassroots and it's come from that domestic game.
"That's still something that we in the IRFU are targeting. More participation leads to better quality which then knocks on to the performance side of things, where I am.
"You see in the inter-provincial series, obviously before Covid, we were adding extra games. I think that's really important to lead into a senior test team.
"There's certainly structures that are in place, we just need to build on those. Whether we get to professionalism with this team, you've got to have that under-valley that supports it.
"You look at our squad, the likes of Dorothy Wall, Beibhinn Parsons, Kathryn Dane and Enya Breen, these are players that have come through a structured pathway. They're the players that have started to really live it.
"It's good to see those players come through and being some of our strongest performers of late. I don't think it's that far away. (Attracting) Numbers en masse is another critical area - and we need to drive that."
While the aftermath of the game saw plenty of resigned hand-wringing about the two-tier reality of the competition, Griggs nonetheless continues to emphasise that Ireland didn't do themselves justice on the day.
"I've reviewed the game a couple of times now. In terms of our performance, we analysed France, we set targets and markers where we thought we could exploit them. And we weren't on our game.
"We didn't use the actions that we had spoken about that we thought could put them under pressure.
"I'm not saying that could have changed the result but we certainly didn't do ourselves any favours as a collective."
One of the few bright spots in Ireland's performance was the showing of replacement out-half Stacey Flood, the star sevens graduate who displayed ample game intelligence and an impressive zip in her passing during the final quarter of the game.
"Stacey is a proven performer on the sevens series. What we like about her is the way she can see the game. She's got a really good rugby IQ. She's been playing it for a really long time at a high level.
"The last couple of performances from her off the bench have been really top notch. She plays heads-up rugby.
"And she's starting to learn more and more that in the 15s game, there is a framework that we can work off that still allows her to express herself and show that talent she has."
At the weekend, Ireland face Italy in the battle for third spot - or best of the rest - in the 2021 championship.
On Monday, the two unions agreed to switch the game from its original venue of Parma to Donnybrook, due to the necessity of quarantine restrictions in this country.
The venue switch has yet to be agreed by government as of early Tuesday afternoon but Griggs is "certainly planning that will be in Donnybrook".
The change could be significant. The last two Six Nations clashes between the sides have seen victory go to the home side on both occasions, Ireland losing 29-27 in the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in 2019 and winning 21-7 in the re-scheduled 2020 game last October.
Griggs, for his part, isn't at all surprised that it's Italy - rather than Scotland - that are next up.
"While it didn't really show on the scoreboard, they had some really bright patches in that game against a really strong England side. So, I thought they'd certainly bring it to Scotland. Once I saw that final result, it wasn't too surprising to be honest.
"We're targeting a victory. We've looked at the last two games against Italy. They beat us in their home patch (in 2019) and then we beat them in October. So, it sets it up nicely.
"It's a good weekend for us to really see where we're at.
"If we can manage to perform this weekend and get that third place, we've won two from three games. Albeit, France is a different kettle of fish but we know that performance-wise, that should lend itself to a result. And you can't ask for much more than two from three.
