Gerry Thornley: Women’s rugby left with a puzzle as sevens trumps 15s

There was something singularly ironic about David Nucifora sitting not far from Greg McWilliams at Welford Road on Sunday. After all, the Irish head coach had been appointed by Nucifora, who then decreed that McWilliams’s entire three-quarter line and full-back would rejoin the Ireland Sevens squad for a training camp in France in preparation for their World Series event in Langford, Canada next weekend.

Like the Lord, the IRFU high performance manager giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other.

Whether or not Nucifora and the IRFU have ever openly stated they prioritise the women’s sevens over the women’s 15s, actions speak louder than words. This has been so since Nucifora landed in 2014, most likely because it is an Olympic sport and funded by Sport Ireland.

By taking Lucy Mulhall, Stacey Flood, Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe, Eve Higgins and Beibhinn Parsons out of McWilliams's Irish squad after they had played in each of Ireland's opening three games of the 2022 TikTok Six Nations for a sevens training camp is the latest example as to why this is so.

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It’s not even as if the fifth leg of the 2022 World Series in Langford next Saturday and Sunday is especially meaningful. It has no ranking, no World Cup qualification and no Olympic qualification at stake. Ireland’s performances to date have also safeguarded them from relegation.

So why on earth is it deemed more important than the Six Nations?

Complete split

Former players who are pundits seem to be increasingly of the view that there may as well be a complete split between the 15s and sevens squads now, and no overlapping or double-jobbing between the two. This is what England have done, albeit they have prioritised the 15-a-side team and targeted winning the World Cup next year, with a probable Grand Slam against a more entertaining French side likely to be sealed next Saturday in Bayonne.

It could be argued that the presence of Mulhall et al wouldn’t have greatly altered the scale of Saturday’s 69-0 thrashing, which was again not a good look for either women’s rugby in Ireland or the women’s Six Nations. The quintet were, after all, also part of the failed World Cup qualifying campaign and the opening defeats by Wales and France in this Six Nations.

For sure, Ireland’s primary problems were up front, where the English maul and scrum caused untold damage – an obvious manifestation of both the superior conditioning and time on the training ground that comes with professionalism. One actually feared an Irish player might get seriously injured such was the way their scrum backpedalled and capsized under so much pressure.

The inadequacies of the Irish set-piece also contributed enormously to the 64 per cent possession and 81 per cent territory achieved by England, forcing Ireland to make 192 tackles as compared to 86 by the home side. While Ireland did indeed perform credibly in restricting England to a 10-0 interval lead, as is so often the case a dominant team tends to earn its rewards with increasing regularity as a match wears on. Sure enough, Ireland missed 37 tackles as compared to England’s four, so conceding nine tries in the second half.

Much of Ireland's best rugby in this Six Nations has featured the offloading game of Sam Monaghan, who was injured, and the sevens quintet. McWilliams's decision to switch Flood from outhalf to inside centre as a second playmaker has largely been a success, even if her inventive handling and playmaking skills could only flourish intermittently against Wales and Italy, and to a lesser extent France.

White tide

Realistically the absent sevens quintet would mostly have been employed in stemming the white tide, albeit they might well have managed to do that to a greater degree, especially when one considers the excellent defending of Murphy Crowe in those opening games.

Giving primacy to the sevens squad will most likely afford McWilliams and this team a further honeymoon period for what is a rebuilding phase. However, a top three finish in the 2023 Six Nations is imperative if Ireland are to qualify for the six-team Tier 1 of the new WXV global tournament which starts next year. While it will be more taxing than, say, Tier 2 or Tier 3, Ireland will only improve by playing the best and, furthermore, there will be no promotion or relegation in “the first cycle of WXV 1”.

The decision to afford primacy to the women’s sevens side is, admittedly, not only with next weekend’s fifth leg of the World Series in Langford in mind, and the final leg in Toulouse next month.

According to the IRFU's press release confirming the composition of the squad for Langford, "the World Series will be followed by the start of the Rugby Europe Championship – the first staging post on the journey to Paris 2024 Olympic qualification – and a standalone Rugby World Cup Sevens Qualifying Tournament in July."

Decision

Yet last week's camp in southwest France and next weekend's World Series leg in Canada will have no direct bearing on that. Prioritising the sevens was also a decision made by two Australians, namely Nucifora and Anthony Eddy, employed by the latter as the IRFU's director of sevens and women's rugby. And this was also a decision with a very Australian viewpoint, where sevens is a more established part of the rugby map. But, as with the strong sense of local identity in Irish sport, the make-up of the provincial teams being a case in point, Nucifora doesn't seem to appreciate that historically and traditionally the 15-a-side game lords it over sevens in Irish rugby. Always has done and always will do.

While it was wonderful to see the Irish men’s sevens team qualify for the Rio Olympics, it perhaps didn’t receive quite the attention or achieve quite the reach which was anticipated.

In this, perhaps, Nucifora and the IRFU also lost sight of one other key factor, namely that the Six Nations is very much the shop window for the sport on this island. Furthermore, every match is on terrestrial television.

The Ireland-Italy game drew a peak TV audience of 138,000, even more than the 119,000 for the camogie final. Last Saturday’s England-Ireland game was televised live by the BBC, with extended highlights on Virgin Media TV.

By contrast, as even the IRFU’s own missive on the squad selected for this weekend’s World Series event put it: “You can watch all the action from Canada on the World Rugby Stream.”

That’s a more select audience.

gerry.thornley@irishtimes.com