The opening game in the TikTok Women’s Six Nations Championship takes place for Ireland in Cardiff next Saturday and 32 strong squad has been together in Dublin since last week.
It includes five new caps that emerged from the Combined Provinces team that took part in the Celtic Challenge that took place in January.
Speaking to Sport for Business yesterday at the IRFU High-Performance centre on the Sport Ireland Campus, Gillian McDarby, Head of Performance and Pathways for the Women’s game said that the squad was in a good place and was ready for the weeks ahead.
“We have a full backroom team in place now from coaching and nutrition to performance analysis, physio and strength and conditioning, all part of the progress that was needed and which is being delivered to the players.”
McDarby will also in the coming days be interviewing for two new roles in each of the provinces, an Athletic Performance and a Pathway Development Manager.
The roles will be based as part of the University sport structure in each of the University of Galway, the University of Limerick, Queens University, and Dublin City University.
The ambition is to create a visible pathway for players who have either grown up through the sport or are going to be attracted from other sports with a wider player base. Further to that there is also a hope that each of the Universities will themselves then become part of the Energia AIL League.
“We want to build a wider base of players that will ultimately strengthen our hand both in the 15’s game and also the sevens where we currently rank as the fifth-best team in the world and are in line for Olympic Qualification in 2024.”
Before that the Six Nations takes centre stage and Ireland will host two games in Musgrave Park, against England and France, both of which will be tough asks but which will show the high level of standard that the Women’s game is now at.
The tournament performance will determine at which level Ireland play at in the new Women’s 15 Series that will take place in the Autumn for the first time. It is good that there are continued development opportunities linking together the different strands as the sport grows.
Musgrave park sold out for the men’s U20’s who won the Grand Slam for a second year in a row on Sunday and the hope is that there will be an afterglow effect among that audience adding to the cohort that is being developed as a fan base around the Women’s game.
“TikTok as sponsors of the Championship are creating a real buzz in a younger audience that might never have been involved in Rugby,” added McDarby. “We have helped players themselves to create their own stories and greater awareness of them is a really important step forward.”
The Women’s team held a commercial day last week which involved six different sponsors, all creating content with the players that will be shared over the coming weeks and which we will highlight here at Sport for Business.
