Sunday's Guinness Women’s Six Nations finale against Scotland has been an elephant in the room for the last five weeks.
A couple of weeks before the championship, when Scott Bemand signed his new contract and announced his squad for the tournament, the showpiece Aviva Stadium fixture was one of the big conversation points, but once we got into championship week, that excitement for the final game was put on the shelf.
Game by game attitude. Following the process. Only focused on England. Only focused on Italy. Only focused on France. Only focused on Wales.
Finally now, time to focus on Scotland, and a landmark day for Irish women’s rugby at the Aviva.
On Saturday night in Belfast, after all of the main questions and answers had been fleshed out following Ireland's comfortable 33-12 win against Wales, the unofficial injunction on Aviva Stadium talk was lifted.
"I suppose now we can really look forward to it," captain Erin King (below) said about the coming week.
"We talk about enjoying our rugby and enjoying the build-up to that game. I think we really deserve it. We've been growing in this tournament in the last few years."
Back in September, when the IRFU announced plans to host their first-ever standalone women’s game at the Aviva, it felt like a bold call.
Attendances for Ireland games had been rising incrementally, but there hadn't necessarily been a clamour to bring a game to the Aviva, as there would have been before the Irish women's soccer team did so in 2023. Had they waited until 2027, when one of England or France were coming to Dublin, it would have seemed an obvious call, given the support base the Red Roses, or the rivalry they have developed with the French.
Prior to the recent win against Italy, the record attendance was still below 8,000, and so picking the final round meeting with Scotland, rather than one of the Big Two, felt like the kind of proactive decision that would have been alien to the women’s game in Ireland a few weeks ago.
There was some strategy to the announcement too; a few days earlier, green jerseys dominated a 30,000 crowd at the Brighton and Hove Albion Stadium for Ireland against New Zealand at the World Cup (below). With a quarter-final a couple of days later against France, goodwill was easy to find.
As we head into match week, that proactive decision has already been proved right, with ticket sales hitting 26,000 a few days ago, just under three times the size of the current record crowd.
Just as impressive is the breakdown of those sales. A flash sale offering €10 adult tickets was a great incentive early after the announcement, but more than half of the tickets have been sold since mid-January, and roughly 8,000 of them have been picked up since the start of the championship in early April.
They will hope to edge closer towards the 30,000 mark by Sunday afternoon, and although they won't be able to break up the Anglo-French dominance this year, a win against Scotland will give Ireland their best Six Nations finish since 2020.
"I think this is where the [women’s] game is and where we should be playing," King added.
"Hopefully we'll sell loads of tickets. We've said openly that we do want to win the three home games, and we haven't done that in a while. Performance first for us.
"If we go and get that win, it will make it all the sweeter. Our heads turn to Scotland now and putting in a big performance against them.
"We got there in the end"
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) May 9, 2026
Ireland's Dorothy Wall on the building blocks behind the win over Wales
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"We are trying to bridge that gap [to England and France]. But I guess, first of all, we need to bridge that gap from ourselves and the rest of the competition. So if we can go out and show what we're capable of, I have no doubt that we can put in a performance that we're proud of next week."
This opening four games of the championship should stand them well for the occasion. While they didn't play well away to England, they looked comfortable playing in front of 77,000 people at Twickenham.
And while there were 60,000 fewer people at Stade Marcel Michelin two weeks ago, the home of Clermont Auvergne was twice as loud, with Ireland dominating France in the opening half.
Arranging this fixture, and doing everything can to drum up hype and support would seem like a complete waste if Bemand (below) spent the next six days trying to shield his team from the build-up.
And with that in mind, the Ireland head coach wants his squad to revel in the excitement of a week to remember.
"You've got to feed off the energy, haven't you?" Bemand said.
"It's our first opportunity to play a standalone game there.
"The experiences that we've had in this competition, and even in the World Cup, where you look at Brighton and how many green shirts there were in the crowd, it's something that I think the group feed off now.
"Maybe a couple of years ago it was a bit daunting, that many people watching and what have you, but now I just see it as being the 16th person on the pitch with you.
"And hopefully, like I say, we get our performance right and we work hard back at the HPC, which we always do, and we get the best performance out there and then we get people talking about it."
