Eve Higgins says Ireland are determined to show how far they have come when they face France in the opening round of the Guinness Women's Six Nations on Saturday.
The experienced back believes the work has been done behind the scenes and that the days of taking token wins out of these games is over.
The team are on an upward curve with a third-place finish in last season's campaign, their progress buttressed by finishing second in WXV1 last year.
Wins over Australia, USA and world champions New Zealand have demonstrated that Scott Bemand's side can compete with some of the game's best teams.
Aoife Wafer and Aoife Dalton scored late tries in last season's 38-17 defeat to put some gloss on the scoreboard but Ireland haven't beaten Les Bleues, ranked fourth in the world, since 2017 and haven't gotten within 20 points in the last six losses.
"It's been years since we had actually scored tries against France and we came away from that game with two late tries but that does bring a bit of confidence that we’ve progressed over the last few years," Higgins, in line for her 22nd cap when the team is named at lunchtime today, said.
"I think everyone just wants to do each other proud and to actually show all the work that we’ve put in for the last number of weeks.
"And to really bring it on Saturday because that’s what the public is going to see and that’s where every single one of us wants to wear a green jersey.
"That’s our goal for every player. It’s no good just doing it in training, we want to perform on the day."
This will be the first meeting of the teams in Belfast, while France have racked up 109 points in their last two visits to Ireland.
In different pools for the WXV in Canada last autumn, the sides arranged two training sessions so will be familiar foes for the 1pm kick-off at Ravenhill.
"We trained against them twice in Vancouver," added the Railway Union back.
"The week leading into the New Zealand game we had our heaviest session against them and we got to train against their backs then again two weeks later before the USA game.
"I think we gained a lot of confidence coming out of those training days especially because it put us in a great place going into the New Zealand game to perform again.
"They have some key star players, [Pauline] Bourdon Sansus is one of the best 9s in the competition.
"They’ve [Gabrielle] Vernier, they’ve great forwards and it’s very much a power game.
"We’re going to have great confidence to play in the areas of the pitch we want to play in and to play the game that we want to play."
After finishing last in the 2023 Six Nations, Ireland, up to sixth in the World Rugby rankings, had only one direction to travel and Higgins stressed how much their kicking game has come on.
Last season they gained more metres from kicks (3,601) than any other side in the tournament, while their place kicking was also top of the charts, 13 of 15 representing an 87% return.
"We have Nic [Fowley] and Dannah [O’Brien, above] who are great kickers and Caitriona [Finn] who has unbelievable distance," said the 25-year-old, who played Sevens at the Paris Olympics.
"I don’t know how many 50:22s and cross-field kicks she’s hit in the Celtic Challenge.
"We’ve gained a lot of confidence from playing our game, in that sense of playing in the [right] areas of the pitch and not over-playing in areas of the pitch that we don’t want to.
"I think the likes of France, they’re going to want to play from anywhere and they’ve a great off-loading game so the worst thing we can do is to fall into that trap of playing like them.
"We want to just play our strengths, and I think the variety of our kicking game has really come on."
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