Pride was the buzz word for Ireland's player of the match Brittany Hogan after qualification for the 2025 Women's Rugby Cup was secured following a tense 15-12 victory over Scotland in their final Six Nations match.
The win in Belfast earned Scott Bemand's side third place in the table just 12 months after Ireland finished bottom and received the ignominy of the wooden spoon.
With Italy losing to Wales earlier on Saturday, it meant events at Ravenhill would decide third place in the Six Nations. The Scots were in the driving seat before kick-off and certainly at half-time when the Irish trailed by five points, with qualification for the World Cup automatically looking unlikely.
However, two second-half tries courtesy of wing Katie Corrigan and hooker Cliodhna Moloney, who came on as a sub, saw the match turn in Ireland's favour before they hung on to a narrow three-point lead in the final minutes.
"It means so much," she said.
"We came out for a performance today. We didn't know what was going to happen after the end of it if we qualified or not but we just wanted to do it together.
"I'm just so proud. I literally heard before I came over here (for the interview) that we've qualified and I'm just so happy.
"We've come through so much as a group and every single one of us - management, players, people who aren't here today and all our supporters - everyone means everything."
We need your consent to load this comcast-player contentWe use comcast-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Hogan took extra satisfaction from how the team recovered from last week's heavy 78-point defeat to England and went through a "really good training week" in time to forge a response against the Scots.
Captain Sam Monaghan echoed Hogan's view that the loss to the English at Twickenham had provided an impetus to the squad to rectify things and said she was "so proud" of the fight shown by her team-mates as they protected the three-point advantage in the face of Scottish pressure in the closing minutes.
We need your consent to load this comcast-player contentWe use comcast-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
"I'm speechless. I think we all left it out there," she said, before pausing to acknowledge the cheers from the crowd.
"We had a very heavy defeat last week and I think that built the fuel for the fire. It was never going to be a straight run in this Six Nations.
"But I'm very proud. We said it at half-time (that) we've every belief that we can win this game and it takes a mentality like that to go forward for a World Cup."
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
