Scott Bemand insists that Ireland will not be overawed by the challenge facing them in Saturday's Guinness Women’s Six Nations meeting with England in Cork.
Twelve months ago, England scored 14 tries in an 88-10 hammering of Ireland at Twickenham, among a 31-game winning run in the competition for the Red Roses, who last suffered a Six Nations defeat in 2018.
To Ireland's credit, they shook that defeat off to beat Scotland a week later, while the side have gone from strength to strength since. After a second-place finish in the top tier of WXV in Canada in October, they’ve made a promising start to this Six Nations, running France close in Belfast before a comfortable defeat of Italy last time out.
And ahead of welcoming England to Cork on Saturday, Bemand believes the gulf between the two teams is starting to close.
"We have spoken around last year, and around the performance and the occasion, but we're not playing that occasion now," the Ireland head coach (below) said. "We're not playing that team now. We're a better team than we were.
"There's no perfect rugby team in the world, and the Red Roses are no different.
"Last time we turned up to Twickenham, 50,000 people, eight-deep on the walk in. This time it's in Ireland, and my understanding is it's going to be close to a sell-out. Ticket sales have been good, people can see what we're trying to achieve and get on the back of it. That's going to feed into a young team's psyche.
"Last time we played down in Cork, we had a great result against the Welsh. We know this is going to be no easy feat, but we know if we can take enough out of them, if we can fire a few shots, as we showed in the New Zealand game, they start to doubt what they're about and that feeds into our psyche.
"We're confident, we've had a great training week in terms of pressure and how fast we're trying to play. Now it's just about producing that performance down in Cork."
Bemand will name his matchday squad on Thursday, and is expected to stick largely with the same 23 that have played in the opening games against France and Italy.
Beibhinn Parsons (below) won’t make her injury comeback at Virgin Media Park, but the winger remains on track to return from her broken leg before the end of the championship.
"Bei [Parsons] is back in training with us. Generally there is a piece around building back up, so Bei's not back in the circle for selection just yet, but it's coming quickly.
"We continue to be in reasonable health, which, having the fallow week after playing two games generally helps return people back in a fit and healthy state.
"The Italian game was a little bit harder than the scoreline suggested, so we came out with a few normal rugby bumps and bruises but have managed to recover nicely going into England," he added.
To put some perspective on England’s dominance over Ireland, last year’s 88-10 game was the first time since 2019 that Ireland had even scored against the Red Roses, and John Mitchell’s side have cruised through the opening rounds of this championship, beating Italy and Wales on a combined score of 105-17.
But Bemand, who spent eight years as assistant coach of England prior to taking the Ireland job, believes his side will show just how much has changed in the last year.
"We're just excited to get back out there and show people that our game has grown over the last 12 months.
"We spoke at the start about trying to close the gap on your Frances and Englands. To sit here now and say we were disappointed to not win a game against France that we felt we were capable of winning, now we welcome England here.
"We all know what happened last year. We're an honest group, happy to talk about it, but we feel we've moved our game on. Hopefully with the result last week and us managing to keep the scoreboard ticking and get to a 50, which we haven't done in recent times, hopefully it's showing that the competence and confidence is growing.
"We believe we are further down the road than we were a year ago, and we think we can fire some shots this weekend.
"If we're in the game, and we get our wheels starting to turn, we think we can cause some problems."
Listen to the RTÉ Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Watch Leinster v Glasgow Warriors in the Investec Champions Cup on Friday from 7.35pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app, and listen to live commentary on RTE Radio 1
Watch Ireland v England in the Guinness Women's Six Nations on Saturday from 4pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
