Ireland have to embrace the challenge of this week's TikTok Women's Six Nations trip to face runaway leaders England in Leicester on Sunday, according to centre Enya Breen.
Greg McWilliams side will have a thankless task at Welford Road on Sunday as they face an English side who have averaged more than 60 points per game in their opening three victories, and are expected to comfortably make it four wins from four ahead of a potential Grand Slam decider against France net weekend.
To add to the Irish challenge, the upcoming HSBC Sevens World Series leg in Langford, Canada has seen seven members of their squad unavailable to face England, with six of those players having played in all three games of the championship.
As well as that, injuries to forwards Sam Monaghan and Aoife Wafer mean there will be at least eight changes to the matchday squad when McWilliams names his team tomorrow.
Breen is likely to be promoted to the starting team for this weekend's Round 4 clash, having featured off the bench in the opening three games.
The Munster back is expected to link up with Sene Naoupu in the centre, and says Ireland can't allow themselves to be intimidated by the professional English side.
"You have to be excited about it," said Breen, who turns 23-years-old on Saturday.
"Yes, it's going to be a massive challenge but they’re the best team in the world and if we want to put ourselves up on that level we kind of have to be excited about it.
"There’s no point in being afraid because that’s when we’ll start going into our shells so we have to be excited and hopefully, if I get an opportunity to play, then that’s what I’ll do. There’s no point in playing with fear.
"We took some tough lessons from the first two weeks but it was great to get our first win on the board against Italy. Some of the things we'd been working on came to fruition a bit and there were some really positive signs which hopefully we can keep building on.
"It's not really a new backline as we've all been involved in camp the last two months, people in and out and training on Tuesday nights…we’ve all been waiting on the fringes waiting for an opportunity if we get it."
To add an extra dimension to Ireland's task, close to 15,000 tickets have already been sold for the game at Welford Road, with organisers confident they will come close to the record attendance for a standalone women's game, with 17,740 the current record dating back to 2018, when France hosted England in Grenoble.
"It can be intimidating but you’ve got to enjoy the buzz of the crowd, you don’t get those opportunities every week," added Breen
"There was a great buzz in Musgrave Park and we really feed off that. Yes it’ll be an English crowd shouting for England, but we can feed off that energy as well."
With Ireland having failed to qualify for the World Cup in New Zealand later this year, McWilliams this week confirmed his squad will go on a first ever summer tour, which is expected to be in Japan.
And Breen says it's just another sign of growth for women's rugby in Ireland.
"It's massive, the first time ever and provides an opportunity for us to touch base and keep involved in a camp through the summer which we’ve never had before.
"We’ve a massive few years ahead of us hopefully so this tour will be the start of that and hopefully help us kick on to the future.
"It’s massively exciting but I haven’t thought too much about the future but it’s great to see new processes being put in place and the potential for a really exciting international calendar in future."
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