Ireland head coach Scott Bemand has welcomed the step up in class his side will face against Spain in the "final" of the WXV3.
The team have already racked up 173 points and 27 tries in complete mismatches against Kazakhstan and Colombia in Dubai over the last two weeks.
Their next task is a re-match with Spain, who famously upset the odds in 2021 when downing Ireland 8-7 in Italy, a result that shook Irish rugby and contributed to their failure to qualify for the Rugby World Cup.
Spain, currently two places behind Ireland in the world rankings in 12th, have beaten Kenya and Fiji so far. Ireland will top the table if they avoid defeat on Saturday afternoon (2pm Irish time).
During a press conference this morning, where it was clarified that winning the WXV3 division doesn't automatically deliver promotion to the second tier, which will depend on Six Nations placings, Bemand said he was confident that the team was prepared for the next step.
"A much-needed challenge," the English man, who took over the team after their Six Nations wooden spoon campaign, said.
"You can only beat what’s in front of you and we’ve been talking about this since the beginning, it’s about our own identity so [those two games] actually gave us a bit of a chance to build... [to] get those on-pitch bonds.
"We’ve trained pretty hard so regardless of who we are playing against we’ve managed to keep our foot down in training and hold ourselves to standards that we believe we’ll need when these bigger challenges do come.
"We’re probably at the right time now where we relish a bit more challenge and coming with that extra pressure that a final can bring, we’re in a good place for it."
Bemand has made two changes to his starting XV with Dorothy Wall and Molly Scuffil-McCabe coming in for Eimear Corri and Aoibheann Reilly, respectively.
In total there are seven players in the match-day squad that lost to Spain two years ago but co-captain Edel McMahon, who was among the replacements that day, says they haven't been using that game as motivation.
The Exeter Chiefs back row said: "I don’t think we’ve really looked at the past, to be honest. The last two weeks the focus was on us. This week the focus is on us. We are very prepared in what we’ve done.
"Absolutely, I don’t want to be in that position again. But I feel like we’re quite well-prepared this time around to play Spain.
"We’ve watched how they’ve grown in the last few games but also seen how we’ve grown. I don’t think we’re for a second taking for granted the opposition we’ve played until now.
"So although the scorelines look fantastic, we’ve been quite in check with how we’re performing. And we've stepped up training again this week.
"Internally, we’ve been really pushing each other with the awareness of what’s to come at the weekend."
Ireland: Méabh Deely; Natasja Behan, Eve Higgins, Aoife Dalton, Béibhinn Parsons; Dannah O'Brien, Molly Scuffil-McCabe; Linda Djougang, Neve Jones, Christy Haney; Dorothy Wall, Sam Monaghan; Grace Moore, Edel McMahon, Brittany Hogan.
Replacements: Clara Nielson, Niamh O'Dowd, Sadhbh McGrath, Eimear Corri, Aoife Wafer, Aoibheann Reilly, Nicole Fowley, Leah Tarpey.
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