Ireland's win over Scotland on Saturday secured a third-place finish in the Guinness Women's Six Nations table.
It was a tournament of ups and down but there was enough evidence to conclude that the team has made significant progress under their new head coach Scott Bemand.
Here we look at five takeaways from the tournament.
The Bemand factor
The table doesn't lie. This time 12 months ago, Ireland were bottom of the pile, finishing Greg McWilliams second Six Nations campaign with zero points.
After claiming two wins the previous year, it was a notable step backwards. It all played out to the sound of "outside noise", with the continued exclusion of Clíodhna Moloney and a story in the Telegraph that quoted a recent member of the squad airing multiple concerns about the set-up.
A few months later, Ireland captain Nichola Fryday retired from international rugby, thus becoming the second captain in two years to step away in their prime.
Given that the letter to the IRFU, signed by 62 current and former players who said they had no "trust" in the union was sent in December 2021, the women’s XVs programme seemed to have hit a new low.
Scott Bemand took over from McWilliams in the summer and led Ireland to a WXV3 title but it was the results from the spring campaign that franked the progress spoken about by the players.
Having stated that third place and automatic qualification was their aim, the team duly delivered. It wasn’t pretty at times but improvement was visible in all games bar the Twickenham thrashing.
There was much to admire for large spells of the game against Italy, the entire 80 minutes against Wales and the second half of the victory over Scotland. It all resulted in a top-three finish – in other words best of the second tier in the competition.
Wafer the breakthrough star
Aoife Wafer made a short cameo debut in 2022 but missed out in 2023 for personal reasons.
She won her second cap against France in March and scored a try, was voted the player of the round after the Italy defeat and picked up another try in a player of the match showing against Wales.
Only 21, the Enniscorthy RFC graduate is set to become a star of the game. In a squad of few 'rugby natives', it’s evident in her carrying, her breakdown smarts and her general play that she’s been playing the sport since early childhood.
Ireland need more ‘rugby natives’ and they will emerge over the next few years with the Celtic Challenge and the Interpros there to develop talent from younger ages.
Other players to impress were Sam Monaghan, when fit, Linda Djougang, Christy Haney and Brittany Hogan. Dannah O’Brien’s footballing ability is clear but she needs more game time to refine her out-half play. The consistency of Aoibheann Reilly’s pass can't be underestimated either.
Wafer, on current form, would be one of the few Irish on the Lions plane in 2027.
IRFU step up
Greg McWilliams was operating without the services of the players from the Sevens programme and experienced hooker Clíodhna Moloney.
Back then it was deemed that preparing a squad for an Olympics qualification bid was more important than the Six Nations. McWilliams never complained publicly about having to work with one hand tied behind his back but, for a programme at a low ebb, it was a huge hindrance.
Bemand arrived off the back of eight successful seasons with England as their 'lead coach’ and was immediately given access to the likes of Béibhinn Parsons (above) and Eve Higgins, and belatedly to Moloney, who was called up prior to the Wales games in round three.
It was better late than never and the Sevens players and the Exeter forward all made big contributions to this campaign.
The IRFU's decisions to make these changes resulted in tangible improvements.
WXV rated
The downside of the upside is that the third-place finish means Ireland, who moved to nine in the World Rugby rankings after the weekend, will go directly into the top tier of the WXV series. There they will come up against England (ranked 1) and France (3), and one of New Zealand (2), Canada (4), Australia (5), and USA (10).
The tournament will be played in Canada in September and October. They didn’t want to be in the bottom tier and playing against Kazakhstan, Colombia and Spain last year but it did allow them to work on some basics and gain confidence from those wins.
It’s going to be a different story in five months’ time when they will face three games in 14 days against the world’s top sides. England hit their straps in round-four, and Ireland were particularly poor on the day but it won’t be much easier. Bemand needs to use his time to fix the lineout, work on some penalty moves, and get his side ready for elite level rugby.
"We’ve always said we want to try and learn faster than anybody else," said Bemand about the elevation to the first division.
"This is a great opportunity to pitch ourselves against New Zealand, Canada, Australia, if that’s how it rolls out as last year. Take as many moments from it to propel us into a World Cup."
Ideally, last year’s victory would have meant automatic promotion to WXV2 and given Ireland another stepping stone to becoming 'World Cup contenders' but they would have taken the third-place, and all that comes with it, if offered beforehand.
English Lions
The first ever Women's Lions tour is planned for September 2027 and with England on a 29-game winning streak in the championship, the plane making its way to New Zealand will be full of Red Roses.
It’s been evident for many years now that the English are head and shoulders above any Six Nations 'rival’. There will be publicity, wider exposure, and if any Irish players go on the tour, the experience they pick up there will be valuable when they return to the national set-up.
But there is a wide argument about the value of the tour to developing world rugby. It’s a copy and paste from the men’s tour, which is what it is today with over 100 years of history behind it.
The WXV won’t take place that year due to the Lions tour and that’s hardly conducive to helping develop emerging rugby nations.
In the same way that any Irish, Welsh or Scots going on the tour will benefit, the majority English contingent will also come back stronger.
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