Peter Burke
This game was always going to be a tough ask for the Irish women and no one expected an Irish win, it simply wasn’t on the cards. The skill gap between a fully professional side and basically an amateur side was apparent for all to see.
Irish coach Scott Bemand said afterwards:
“The Irish girls are quite young and coming into an occasion like this, the girls have to learn to handle it. We probably looked a bit young out there.
“We’re taking steps to where we want to get do. It won’t happen overnight.
“The girls were a bit rocked in terms of energy. Technically and tactically, it was what it was
“We’ll take our learnings from this. There’s a big game coming next week so we go again.”
A rampant first-half performance and England scored six tries – four of them inside the opening 20 minutes through wing Abby Dow (two), scrum-half Natasha Hunt, centre Meg Jones, second row Zoe Aldcroft and full-back Ellie Kildunne, it was powerful stuff by the English and all the Irish could do was lament some bad decisions and errors, missed tackles and hit the sheds wondering how they could ease the onslaught.
Ireland got some respite, albeit short lived, when a penalty try was awarded and a sin binning for Lucy Parker.
However that just seemed to get the Red Roses going again as they crossed the whitewash a further 8 times in the second 40′ nearly reaching a record breaking score line against the Irish.
England play France next in the hope of securing a 6th title in a row.
However you want to look at it this was a miss match of epic proportions – It was women vs girls and through no fault of the Irish women, this was akin to Real Madrid v Bray Wanderers and expecting Bray to get a result, utterly farcical.