Ireland's inside trader Gareth Steenson hopes he can add some home comforts to the squad’s preparation for Sunday’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final against France at Sandy Park.
The Armagh native spent most of his playing career with Exeter Chiefs and won the Premiership twice as well as a Champions Cup in 2020, after which he was awarded the Freedom of the City.
The 41-year-old former out-half had 16 years with the club as player and coach and still has ties in Devon including The Stand Off bar in the city centre.
The squad have already hit him up for coffee shop tips, while they also had the local knowledge of three of the panel, Edel McMahon, Clíodhna Moloney-MacDonald and Nancy McGillivray, who play in the PWR with the Chiefs.
Steenson never made a breakthrough with Ulster and didn’t win a senior international cap with Ronan O’Gara and Johnny Sexton dominating the 10 jersey for most of his playing career.
Helping Ireland to a first World Cup semi-final in 11 years at his old haunt is a huge motivation.
"That would be up there," said Steenson, who joined the IRFU as a kicking coach last summer.
"On a personal level, being involved with an Irish team is a very proud moment.
"To be able to say, I would be standing here with a green shirt on at Sandy Park, I never would have thought that would be something.
"So to be doing it in a knockout game, I’m actually getting goosebumps thinking about that. It doesn’t happen too often so it’s very exciting.
"I know [Exeter] a little bit, yeah.
"It’s lovely for me to come back, just to be able to walk around. Some of the girls were asking about the nice coffee shops around here and places to go.
"It’s lovely for me but this isn’t about me, it never is, it’s about what the girls can bring.
"If I can add value in, around feeling more confidence in being in the area, being more confident when we go to Sandy Park, just different pieces, hopefully I can add a bit of value in there."
Ireland began the tournament with bonus-point wins over Japan and Spain but fell to a 40-0 loss to New Zealand in their final Pool C match (above).
"We are disappointed at how it played out at the weekend. I suppose the last couple of tries flattered the scoreline," he said.
"For our girls, they’ve put it to bed pretty quickly.
"We have to, it’s knockout rugby this week and from our point of view, they’ve turned up really well.
"They’ve taken things on board quickly.
"We had our first install [Tuesday], which was really good, we’ve started to put the plan together for what we need for this week and the girls are buying into it.
"The nature of the defeat, coming up against the world champions, a very good outfit.
"But for us it was a good physical test.
"We’ve probably put ourselves in a good space because of it and there was definitely opportunities out there and we were able to create opportunities against a very strong side.
"That’s a real positive.
"We would have liked to get on the board but the girls have been able to review it and say there were a lot of opportunities we just didn’t take."
France have scored 26 tries in three Pool D wins. They are familiar foes with Ireland running them close in last spring’s 27-15 Six Nations loss.
Asked about influential scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus (above), Steenson preferred not to focus on just one player.
"French rugby, many great 9s, but it’s not just in those positions. They’ve got players all over the field," he said.
"That physical battle, first and foremost the French are traditionally big forward packs and if we can meet them with a physical dominance straight up, hopefully we can keep everyone on the backfoot.
"We’ve looked at loads of threats across the board, kicking game, physically, it’s all there.
"But we feel we’ve got stuff that can combat that and we want to get them as physically ready for what’s going to be a big test."
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Watch Ireland v France in the Women's Rugby World Cup quarter-final on Sunday from 12.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio. All other quarter-finals on RTÉ Player
