Ireland are confident that Dorothy Wall and Linda Djougang will both be passed fit for Saturday's must-win TikTok Women's Six Nations finale with Scotland in Edinburgh.
Wall missed last Saturday's defeat to England due to an ankle injury, while Djougang was replaced early in the game for a head injury assessment from which she didn't return.
However, Wall trained fully with the squad this morning at the IRFU high performance centre, and is "tracking pretty well" to be available this weekend, according to senior coach John McKee, while the New Zealander also expects Djougang to be available, with the loosehead prop "tracking well" through the return to play protocols.
Nicole Cronin is likely to miss the final game of the championship. The half-back was a late withdrawal from the matchday squad last Saturday having been injured in the warm-up, and was helped from the pitch with a leg injury before been seen wearing a protective boot on the sideline.
With four defeats from four games, Ireland will need to win with a bonus-point against the Scots to stand any chance of avoiding the wooden spoon.
McKee admits their campaign as a whole has been "disappointing", he's confident they're making progress from performance standpoint.
"On the results, it's been a disappointing campaign, but there's been parts of games and things in games that we can take positivity from as well. There has been progress across the tournament."
And the former Fiji boss (below) says the cup final nature of this weekend's meeting with Scotland will focus their minds ahead of Saturday's game at the DAM Health Stadium.
"This week, that's what it is, a cup game, we have to go to their place and that's a challenge. The important thing this week is that we have to bring energy for the whole group collectively, for the whole group to go to Scotland with a positive attitude.
"We have to park some of those disappointments and treat it like a one-off game. What happened last week; yes, we learned some lessons but the reality of what we can control is what we do next, and that's how we prepare for this game, and bring a winning performance at the weekend."
As an experienced forwards coach, McKee's main task this week will be to bring stability to a faltering lineout, which has seen Ireland spurn several try-scoring chances against England and Italy in particular.
And with Ireland's maul having looked strong when they have been able to secure possession from the lineout, he says it's vital they get it right if they're to turn opportunities into points.
"Massively, the percentage of ball you have in the game, you win a penalty, you get downfield, you go to your lineout, and you want to be able to be 99% sure you're going to get the ball. We've got to get that right.
"We've done a pretty thorough review of that, it was disappointing that at vital moments in the game we could have got a hold in the game and we turned the ball over, and didn't have enough ball to play with, particularly in the first half.
"We've got to go back to our drill, make sure our drill is spot on. Some of our calls weren't the best calls to make. That was last week, and we'll look forward to this week.
"We have a lineout session this afternoon, so we'll be looking at being a lot, lot sharper in that area.
"Scotland are quite a different team to England, they were able to exert a lot of pressure in that area. Scotland are a different team with different defensive systems. Hopefully we can get our drill spot on, and we can have a couple of things up our sleeve that they wont expect."
Listen to live commentary of Scotland v Ireland (Saturday, 7.30pm) in the TikTok Women's Six Nations on RTÉ Radio 1, or watch England v France (1pm) and Italy v Wales (3.30pm) on RTÉ Player.
Watch Leinster v Toulouse in the Heineken Champions Cup semi-final live on Saturday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on the RTÉ News app or RTÉ.ie/Sport and listen to live commentary on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
