Deirbhle Nic a Bháird reckons women's rugby could be "more exciting" if they didn’t have to use the same sized ball as the men’s game.
It’s an anomaly in mainstream ball-handling sports that the size of ball is not adjusted to the physiology of the participants.
Gaelic football, camogie, Australian rules, basketball and cricket, for examples, all use smaller balls in the female version, while in volleyball, the ball is slighter bigger for women.
For a sport in competition with much more established codes, it sometimes doesn’t help itself in its aim to grow numbers.
While the size of the ball is not an excuse for the 39 handling errors in Ireland’s Six Nations match against Italy – there were 35 in the men’s game between the two nations – it doesn’t help with basic catch-pass skills and reduces lineout options.
There is an argument about negatively impacting the kicking game but in the battle for eyeballs, one surely trumps the other.
"I’m not sure what the most effective thing is but I definitely feel it’s worth looking at," Ireland back row Nic a Bháird, currently rehabbing a serious ACL injury, tells RTÉ Sport.
"Even in terms of making the game more exciting, handling-wise, someone like Sam [Monaghan, Ireland lock] throws how many offloads a game?
"Imagine how many more she could throw, and how many other people could throw them if the ball was adjusted to our [stature], I guess.
"I’m on the smaller end of the player spectrum as it is so it would probably benefit me as well."
Last year there were reports of a possible trial with a smaller ball in a regional competition in Asia with the aim to "enhance player and fan experience".
A previous trial with a size 4 ball presented difficulties with kicking, but there is also the possibility of using a size 4.5.
World Rugby told RTÉ Sport "there will be an update next week at the player welfare and laws symposium. We will be confirming the trial programme.
"The Celtic Challenge teams had a number of skills sessions with the 4/5 ball in their recent competition."
"I guess the challenge is when you bring it in because you’d have to integrate it in a way that players were doing it for a while before they got to international stage," adds the 28-year-old Munster woman.
"I don't think it’s reasonable to expect girls who have got to professional or international standard to change something as significant as that, especially for kickers, that changes everything for them, the weight of the ball.
"Maybe trialling it where you have a smaller ball in the underage systems, if we say, from two years on they just don’t change, the girls that are coming up through the system, they stay the same."
Centrally contracted Nic a Bháird was one of Ireland’s standout players in a Six Nations wooden spoon campaign last season and suffered her injury just five days before the squad left for the WXV tournament in October.
Speaking as an ambassador for the new Tackle Your Feelings app, Nic a Bháird (above) admits that there were some extremely difficult days on her road to recovery.
"There were days I didn’t want to train but not any point at which I didn’t think I’d get back from it," says the former Sevens player, who hopes to return in September.
"I’ve had nearly 10 years of a career and this was my first surgery so I had a lot of learning to do to get out of the pit, I suppose.
"I don’t know if I expected it to be as bad as it was, the bad days.
"I was never thinking it wasn’t worth it but definitely a realisation that this was a lot harder than I expected it to be.
"My family are huge supporters of everything I do.
"They probably suffered disappointment more than I did at times because I have other tools, a team of players who have experienced things like this to help me through the stages.
"The IRFU and RPI [Rugby Players Ireland] have provided resources from a sports psychology and injury psychology view that have been invaluable.
"I wouldn’t be getting through it, I’m not going to say ‘as easily’ but I wouldn’t be getting through it without them as effectively.
"There have been days where I’ve been broken by it for sure but if I didn’t have those resources and connections like Aoife Lane in RPI, I wouldn’t have found it as manageable."
The Cork woman has stepped up her rehab and is back on the pitch, while she has also been working as a media analyst, mostly for TG4, she admits she finds it hard to comment on her team-mates but still has to be asked about Ireland’s 27-21 defeat to Italy.
"It’s hard publicly taking about the team performances, I typically don’t if I can avoid it but we are our own worst critics," she says.
"Even when we have been slated before, and we have, it’s nothing like we are all feeling after a bad performance.
"We just went off script [against Italy] and when you do that it becomes more frantic.
"The coaching staff had been pushing us at training, like you work at higher capacity than match day and that will prep you for those intense situations.
"We were just missing those last few percentages, I’m not sure why, perfect conditions. We were in the driving seat for a good chunk of that game."
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