We’re midway through the women’s Six Nations, and it’s a wide-open race. This is the first time in years that the title could go one of four ways. France, England Wales and Ireland have all lost one game each. Now we’re heading into the final two games looking for wins – but points difference is also important, as this can mean the difference between first and second place.
Our last game was against England, a powerhouse in women’s rugby since its inception, and a side we’ve yet to defeat. In recent years we have come agonisingly close to causing an upset, and we were confident going into this game, off the back of two wins. But at no stage did we underestimate the ability of England, particularly as they needed a win to salvage their season.
Our team met up as usual on the Thursday afternoon for our final training session, which didn’t go as well as we would have liked. We ended up staying on the pitch for two hours trying to get things right, but in hindsight that wasn’t the wisest thing to do. I was shattered after the session and stayed in the ice bath for twice as long, hoping that it would speed up my recovery.
That evening we had, as always, an excellent meal in the Green Isle hotel. They look after us so well there. We also did our usual video analysis and discussed our plan for the match. Much to the delight of my room-mate Jo, it was the first night that I went straight to bed and didn’t stay up talking or watching TV.
Although we were playing an evening game, we didn’t want to break our normal daily routine too much, so we were up on Friday morning for weigh-in and breakfast at 9am, followed by a units session in the car park at 10. These went well and helped us focus on the task at hand.
Next was a meeting with sports psychologist Enda McNulty. I love the idea of sports psychology but as I’ve said before, it needs to be done over a long period to reap the real benefits, and I don’t know how beneficial these one-off sessions are.
Before we knew it we were arriving in St Mary’s with plenty of time to warm up. There was a huge crowd on hand and they were very vocal, which is brilliant for the team. I have to say I love playing England as it is always a clean, hard-fought game.
The game itself started at a ferocious pace and we were in control. Our scrum was the most solid it has ever been against England; we were breaking the gain line and we were putting England to a halt anytime they tried to build up a steam. We were first to score, with a well-taken penalty. Then we were back on the scoreboard with a converted try.
From a solid scrum, Tania (scrumhalf) broke left and was tackled short of the line, but she off-loaded to Amy Davis who powered over. England then responded well with a try, which resulted from bad defence by us. At half-time we were leading 13–5 and we felt in control.
However, England came out a different team in the second half. We didn’t react quick enough to change our defence and England outflanked us four times to score four tries. We were out on our feet; we just couldn’t sustain the pace in the second half. The final score was 29–13 to England.
They definitely deserved the win; they were excellent in the second half. We can take away a huge amount of positives from the first half, but we need to fix the mistakes we made after the break.
Next up is possibly our most important game to date. If we win we are almost guaranteed qualification for the World Cup in 2010. But Scotland are no walk-over and we have only ever beaten them three times. It will be a very physical match; I just hope that we can implement the correct game plan to beat them.
Fiona Coghlan is an Irish International rugby player. Her column appears every fortnight in Metro Éireann
