Womens' rugby Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread

I don't doubt for a second that they gave their all on the day.

Are you serious? Separating it from the men's has boosted coverage and attendance and support for the women's competition. The women's world cup isn't even in the same year as the men's.

Yes it means there's nowhere to hide, nor should there be. We'll build and improve but that will take time. We gave our men time after a bad few seasons, we owe the women the same.

It was an extremely bad look when all the controversy about the running of the womens team was in the papers over the past couple of years and whenever players were asked for comment almost none of them said we need to play better, we need to work harder , we need to improve our skills it was always someone elses fault.

Every individual athlete has personal responsibility regardless of the sport.The fact that the players seemed to lay all the blame at the hands of the IRFU and none of it on themselves is not a good look in my opinion irrespective of how poor the structures and management are.

Every time I read any comment from players in the papers over the last couple of years only a couple of them said we need to get better all the rest laid the blame on the IRFU.

What do you want me to do to back up that statement, go through newspaper archives for the past 2 years and fund all the quotes from players, because I haven't got enough time to do that.

The best method for producing skillful and quality athletes, in any sport, is through investment. Invest in developing coaches, invest in providing coaches, invest in equipment, invest in clubs etc.

The IRFU track record in the men's and womens game is, historically, absolutely appaling. You'd struggle to find a more inept organisation in the world. They've gotten a lot better over the last 20 years, couldn't have been much worse either. In the men's game the IRFU basically relied on private secondary schools to produce rugby talent. Outside of that, they generally did **** all themselves to help towards it. Even now, if the Ireland team was made of players who only ever plsyed for a local club we'd be wooden spoon contenders every year.

Girls private secondary schools don't gear themselves towards rugby like the boys ones do. Hence they are in the very unfortunate position of relying on the IRFU not being incompetent at establishing structures for producing talented athletes.

It will take years for the women's team to have a chance, and relying the IRFU to drive that kind of success. I genuinely feel sorry for them. Its like a formula 1 driver being given a lada and told he needs to win with and if he doesn't it's solely his fault.

Seems there has been an update on WXV and our route to WXV 2 just got tougher! 4th in the 6 Nations makes it but 5th will have to play-off against Spain (Rugby Europe Women's Championship winners) to see who gets the second Europe spot. What is even more interesting is the phrasing "The region represented by the team that finishes bottom of WXV 2 at the end of each tournament, will be relegated" as that implies if a European team finishes last it's not that they are relegated but that Europe loses a spot which to me implies finishing 4th in the 6 nations next year would put us in WXV 2! The WXV 3 uses similar wording on promotion so implying we could win WXV 3 but if Spain/Scotland were relegated from WXV 2 we would still have to finish 4th in the 6 nations next year to be sure of a spot in WXV 2 in 2024 (which guarantees a World Cup spot).

I really don't think they have all the details right with this and they certainly are doing a terrible job of promoting it but I still love it. Also interesting they still don't clarify at all how the pools will work. I think we can safely assume they still intend WXV 1 to be 6N Vs P4N but I wonder if they even have a concrete plan for WXV 2 and WXV 3.

The last interesting thing here is that this still really implies that, despite what lots of pundits have said over the last week in particular, there is no "stuck for 2 or 3 years" based on this seasons results. I think the only thing that's actually fixed until after the World Cup is that WXV 1 will be 3 6N Vs 3 P4N.

pointless game today. England France is the only game that might have or achieve parity.

absolutely pointless

Hopeless again today. Hard to take the whole thing seriously when match reports try to suggest progress in a game where the team didn't even score a point.

Comparisons with the men's team in the late 1990s are wide of the mark, they were never anything close to this bad.

Will be very interesting to see who was behind the handing out of the leaflets in the stand. Awful stuff. Controversy just seems to follow this team around unfortunately.

What you saw in the last 10 minutes were women who were totally drained, physically and mentally. Remember we were mooted to lose this game by over 100 points but we kept England to half that. That in itself is an incredible achievement and a marked improvement. Never ever judge a performance by watching the final ten minutes.

I thought the same, saw them celebrating that tackle and was like wtf?! A couple of minutes later England knocked on in midfield and there was a few of the Irish players punching the air and clapping. Not sure why you’d be doing that when 40 points down…you should be annoyed to be getting hammered.

There is time to develop the domestic scene. We cant just export all our top players to england and hope for the best. With a proper domestic structure we have more control. our best interests should be the fore which will never be the case if you have all best players playing in england and as already said in this thread the mens game when it went pro saw an exodus to england and it was primarily when we got our house more in order at home that improvements in the national team occured.

Playing Celtic Challenge will still be an improvement on playing domestic games alone. We need to get sides playing french and english more as well. Just throwing money at the domestic league isnt the answer but the whole structure. Nearly all the top clubs in the WAIL dont field age grade sides. they simply take all the best players when they move to Limerick/Dublin etc for work/college

We will never improve unless our domestic game is improved. If you build our teams and structures you could build a european competition with english, french sides like the mens european cups.

Its not about protecting irish domestic players its about long term developing our structures and systesm to develop future players. The English and French teams want to develop more and will play outside their own country.

We need to develop our own structures to ensure the next generation will be able to develop. that isnt as likely to happen in Wales. The english clubs will primarily want international quality players and not be looking at players not at that level yet.

We will only close the gap with england and france by improving what we do in Ireland. improving what rugby our clubs play and what rugby our provinces play.

Except if this work isnt done Ireland wont succeed. You have to get professional structures right otherwise you still wont be able to compete.

It doesnt matter if your top players are pro if the structures for developing new players to the top level are not right.

Rugby not being played in schools in the same fashion as boys rugby isnt a problem if you have enough clubs playing and you have development officers from each of the provinces and IRFU assisting girls who want to play or get introduced in school and then can join clubs.

The problem with the domestic scene is simply too many top players are concentrated in too few clubs which means games with top sides are very high quality but there isnt enough of those games. We were getting more playing when Lynn Cantwell et al were playing but its going to be slow to build numbers up

Exactly. If you had more players spread across more clubs you can help attract more players and get more clubs to top level easier and you have a higher quality of games.

If you have top players spread across 10 teams as you say you have far more competitive sides which means more high quality rugby which improves standards for provincial rugby and national rugby

It means women's xv 3rd division this year which could be a big risk regarding our world cup qualification.

Also lower standard of competition.

Goal has to be winning it.

It was interesting that Nene said that they had met with the IRFU after a couple of games, because I noticed the chat had changed midway and they weren't too focused on the IRFU being the blame on everything.

Jenny Murphy said that we have the best men's team in the world but look at the women's. Now whilst it is factually correct, the reality is Leinster are the best in the world and that is skewing everything to think that things are ok. Munster and Ulster are failing, Connaught are doing ok. Leinster are basically carrying the whole thing for people to believe that everything in Irish rugby is great.

And even then, you could just attribute it to a select number of secondary schools in Leinster that have an elite rugby program and Leinster Rugby are feeding on it.

There are big problems all round.

There was no improvement. Just a reduced scale of beating as we were playing a weaker opponent.

As I've said before I have no problem with the team being poor, as long as they stop going around blaming everyone else to try to deflect the blame from themselves. Hopefully we'll see a shift away from that, because they must have seen by now that they're not doing themselves any favours in the eyes of the public with that approach.

There should be no issue with them coming out and saying we aren't good enough because, as rugby players, this generation simply aren't good enough so they'd just be being honest.

As a country we're never going to replicate the success of the mens' provincial setup in the women's game, because they're just never going to generate the income the men do, no matter how good they are. But we should be at least competitive with Scotland and Wales - if the way to achieve that is to rely on the English system then so be it.

In the short term there's bound to be plenty of talent available to us through Irish qualified players who were born and developed in England and other countries. Finding them and bringing them in ahead of some of the current team may be a short term fix to stop the hammerings - because no amount of coaching or investment will improve the current senior players in the squad to any significant extent.

Its completely false, ignorant and ridiculous to say rugby usually played by women not skilled at other sports.

Have you seen many games either in girls or womens rugby to say that.

Yes the numbers playing gaelic is far more and it isnt near every small town with a club supporting them. maybe in some counties.

Ireland did have teams able to compete. But as other unions changed systems and progressed. Ireland didnt, the team that was very good moved on and retired and Ireland fell back