Gerry Thornley: Ireland Women’s woes came as no surprise, but green shoots can be seen

The final table tells no lies, and there it is in black and white. Ireland have the wooden spoon again, as they did in 2002 and 2004, but this time with a worse points’ difference, thus making it officially the worst campaign in the Women’s Six Nations.

Whether this is a new nadir, or merely the continuation of a low period that saw interprovincial teams train in a rat-infested Donnybrook car park, the failure to qualify for the last World Cup and the signed letter by players to the Government, is hard to gauge. Only time will tell if this is as bad as it gets.

Truth be told, it was hardly a surprise that, after Ireland missed out on the World Cup, the ripple effects continued into this tournament.

Sene Naoupu, one of those still bearing the scars from that anguished play-off loss to Scotland in a team that included Ireland’s 7s stars and really should have won, bravely admitted as much in the aftermath of Saturday night’s 36-10 defeat by Scotland.

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The Scots may have signed off last year’s rescheduled World Cup in New Zealand with a 57-0 thrashing by the hosts and eventual winners, but they had lost narrowly to Wales (15-18) and Australia (12-14). Italy and Wales played four matches in reaching the quarterfinals, while the big two of England and France played six. Meanwhile, Ireland were on the outside looking in, before embarking upon this Six Nations with much more of a remodelled team, and with Wales, Italy and Scotland all away, and the Big Two in Musgrave Park.

As soon as the Welsh pack started dismantling the Irish scrum in the opening game, the grimness looked set to continue, and so it came to pass.

The scrum improved markedly as selection mistakes were rectified, but other core issues remained, not least a wobbly lineout and a limited attacking game, which yielded two pick-and-go tries and one penalty try. The backline hardly ever looked like scoring and, perhaps most of all, Ireland missed 191 tackles, or 22 per cent, in their five games.

Yet some individuals never let their standards waver in what must have been a very difficult campaign amid so much outside noise.

Deirbhile Nic A Bhaird had the second-highest tackle count (70) in the entire Championship, and her 467 metres was the fourth highest. Sam Monaghan had the third-highest amount of carries (69), along with a modest five offloads by her standards.

Nichola Fryday led from the front throughout, making 55 tackles and winning 35 lineouts, comfortably the most of any player in the Championship. Typically, Neve Jones made 90 tackles, the highest tally by any player in the Championship, and won four turnovers.

Amid the inevitable Irish blame game, there’s no doubt that Irish women’s rugby is paying for the historical neglect by the IRFU. But the organisation is evolving, with Kevin Potts widely acknowledged as an instigator of change. Thirty-five per cent of their 240-strong non-playing staff consists of women, and it features 15 different nationalities.,And they are investing money, thought and planning into the women’s game. A host of recently retired women’s players are working under Gillian McDarby, the head of women’s performance and pathways, who was only appointed late last year.

Admittedly, there’s also the nagging suspicion that the Irish women’s team has hit rock bottom at a particularly inopportune time, what with World Rugby’s WXV coming on board in October.

The top three in the Six Nations – England, France and Wales – will go into Tier 1, with no promotion or relegation after the first year. Scotland will be in Tier 2, while Ireland will be in Tier 3, along with the losers of a play-off between Italy and Spain, one from Asia, possibly Kazakhstan, one from Oceania, which could be Samoa, one from Africa, potentially Kenya, and one from South America, possibly Colombia or Brazil. World Rugby will confirm details shortly, and word is that Tier 3 might take place in Hong Kong.

The one positive here is that there is promotion in the first year, although that would require Ireland winning Tier 3.

There’s also the possibility that the WXV might assume greater importance, not least commercially, than the Six Nations, for this was not a vintage Championship. Five of the 15 matches had winning margins of 50 points or more, along with three two-score games before last Saturday’s Twickenham shoot-out between England and France in front of a record 58,498 crowd produced the only one-score game of the Championship.

Family packages were priced at four for £50 (€56.92), but the more diverse crowd ensured four times the amount of merchandise sold, and more queues at the food outlets than the beer stalls, albeit with much longer queues for the women’s toilets as well!

But as Kat Marchand, a former Grand Slam winner with England, put it on the BBC Radio 5 live Rugby Weekly, the women’s international game “is in a grace period”, where such one-sided scorelines are accepted, “but I don’t think that’s going to last forever.”

What’s more, as last Saturday showed, England and France are not going to stand still.

But these remain uncertain times for the women’s game, and who knows how the next few years will pan out? Maybe the AIL and the women’s interpros, hitherto a movable, ad hoc competition which has not provided an adequate pathway for players and coaches, will become fit for purpose. Maybe the Celtic Cup will too. Maybe the RFU will look to expand the Premiership to include Celtic teams, but one ventures that the IRFU are putting structures in place that will become envied by their Celtic cousins and the Italians.

And if we’ve learned anything in the history of the men’s game, which at least had the foundations of schools, club and provincial rugby as it navigated through the choppy waters of the 90s, these things take time.

The picture has also been clouded by the focus on the women’s 7s team, who should hopefully reach the Olympics before coming back on board in this World Cup cycle.

There were also some green shoots of optimism in the Under-18 Six Nations. Ireland lost only 24-15 to a French side that hammered Italy, Scotland and Wales without conceding a point and beat England 57-10. Ireland also beat Italy 10-0 and Scotland 31-5, before losing 19-17 to Wales by dint of a last minute try.

So, maybe from this point, finally if gradually, the only way is up?

gerry.thornley@irishtimes.com