Ireland 43; Spain 27
Like the curate’s egg, this Ireland performance was only good in parts as they ran in seven tries but allowed Spain to cross their line five times before eventually winning by 16 points at Franklin’s Gardens on Sunday.
The good news is that this victory secured our qualification for the quarter-finals of the Women’s Rugby World Cup with a game to spare. The disconcerting part following our Spanish showing is that we face the Black Ferns of New Zealand in our next encounter in Brighton next week.
For sure Scott Bemand’s side set another record in Northampton by achieving the country’s best ever points total in a World Cup game, but there were chinks in our defensive armor, particularly against the powerful forwards of the Spanish who time and again had us in all sorts of trouble as they camped on our line.
The good news is that our own attack, while nowhere near as powerful, was much more inventive and slick under the baton of young outhalf Dannah O’Brien.
Behind a largely dominant scrum, her kicking was varied and for the most part kept us going forward to such an extent that we had the bonus try in the bag by the interval.
O’Brien herself together with Amee-Leigh Costigan, Eve Higgins and Anna McGann all dotted down in the first segment with three more tries scored in the second half.
Two of those came from the impressive Grace Moore in the third quarter and McGann’s second of the day helped calm supporters’ nerves.
The nagging fear in the performance was how easily the Spanish penetrated once they got into our 22. Their pick and go tactic had us in all sorts of troubles and led to the concession of penalties - if the same thing happens against the Black Ferns, we will feel it on the scoreboard.
Afterwards Bemand expressed satisfaction at a job well done. “That's exactly where we want to be. We've got our two wins, we've got two bonus-point wins, all roads lead to Brighton now, and we want to go and challenge a World Cup contender.
“We knew what we wanted out of today, to get a bonus-point win. At the start of the day, I'd have bitten your hand off, just because the magnitude of the importance of what it signifies.
“You can hear it in the other room now [team singing Killeagh], to get into a World Cup quarter-final was something we wanted to achieve and we wanted to achieve it at the first chance.
“I actually credit Spain. Culturally, I think they've been an improving nation over the last two years. We played them two years ago, in WXV3, we were 10-0 down at half-time, managed to come back and win that. So we knew they were going to be dogged and resilient.
“I think we controlled it early and well, and some of the kicking in the first half was sublime, in the corners and just keeping pressure on the Spanish.
“They're a good team, Spain. We'd have good moments, good exits, and give them an entry back so it felt like a very flip-flop game by the end of it, where we'd get out, we'd give away a penalty, we're back in and we're defending 10 minutes of pick and go. So we'll look hard at that, about how we can stop it and what we need to do,” he pledged.
Ireland scorers: Tries: Dannah O’Brien, Amee-Leigh Costigan, Eve Higgins, Anna McGann (2), Grace Moore (2) Cons: Dannah O’Brien (3), Enya Breen (1)
Spain scorers: Tries: Claudia Perez, Marieta Roman, Claudia Pena, Ana Peralta, Cristina Blanco Cons: Amalia Argudo.
Ireland: S Flood; A McGann, A Dalton, E Higgins, A-L Costigan; D O'Brien, M Scuffil-McCabe; E Perry, C Moloney-MacDonald, L Djougang; E Corri-Fallon, S Monaghan (co-captain); F Tuite, C Boles, Grace Moore Replacements: N Jones (for Moloney-MacDonald, 60), S McCarthy (for Perry, 60), S McGrath (for Djougang, 60), R Campbell (for Tuite, 70), B Hogan (for Monaghan, 23), E Lane (for Scuffil-McCabe, 51), E Breen (for O'Brien, 60), N McGillivray (for Dalton, 60).
