Scott Bemand is challenging his Irish players to "close the gap" on France and England, as Ireland get their Guinness Women's Six Nations campaign under way on Saturday.
Ireland host France in their opening game of the championship on Saturday in Belfast, with the sides potentially on a collision course for a World Cup quarter-final later this year.
It's eight years since Ireland last beat France, and England are the only team to have defeated Les Bleus in the championship since 2019, with the pair finishing first and second in the table for five years in a row.
This will be a second Six Nations in charge of Ireland for Bemand, who has overseen a dramatic improvement in results and performances in the last 18 months.
This time last year, the Englishman said he expected his team to simply "fire some shots" at the French when the sides met in Le Mans, and they did so, despite losing 38-17.
One year on, expectations have increased, and Bemand's side have loftier ambitions.
"We've got to move our game forward, we’re hungry to close the gap on a monopoly held by England and France, to a degree," he said after naming his team for Saturday's game in Belfast.
"They’ve always been the top two in the Six Nations for a good while.
"Obviously they [France] have had a relatively tough WXV 1, they said they reviewed it hard over in France. Bringing them to our shores gives us a great opportunity to test ourselves.
"We’ve made some advances to our game, we’ve been throwing a reasonable amount at the players, trying to take them forward in terms of speed of learning, bits of our game that we feel we can be successful with France.
"Yes, we’d certainly like to fire a few more shots than we did last time."
With Sam Monaghan injured and Edel McMahon and Enya Breen on the bench, Bemand has selected Amee-Leigh Costigan as his team's captain for Saturday's game in Belfast.
While the game will be just a 14th cap at Test level for Costigan, the 29-year-old is a seasoned veteran of the Irish Sevens team, and one of the key members of the squad that qualified for and played in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
"Amee-Leigh, ever since coming back in from the Sevens programme, has been an absolute role-model leader in this environment.
"She's come back in, she's scored a lot of tries on the Sevens circuit and has a massive name for herself, but from I've seen is someone that is absolutely hungry to be better as a player in every facet of the game.
"She's been a great role-model leader, we believe she's the voice of the group.
"We've got somebody that embodies what we're trying to become as a group," he added.
The Ireland coach confirmed that McMahon will assume the captaincy when she comes on as a replacement, and the flanker is part of a 6:2 split on the bench.
It's a first time Ireland have taken that risk with their bench under Bemand.
"You can't cover everything, so you go, 'what do we need to get our best game out there?'. There's some disappointed backs, when they're fighting for two spots. Part of what we've got in Ireland is a dynamic back five, and we want to be able to light that up.
"We believe the cavalry coming on to finish the game can hopefully set us up to get what we want to out of this fixture.
"Tricky [McMahon] is going to come off the bench as a finisher, which is where I believe the game will be won and lost."
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