John McKee says Ireland won't be distracted by the potential prize of World Cup qualification for Saturday's Guinness Women's Six Nations finale against Scotland in Belfast.
Ireland go into this weekend's showdown with Scotland knowing a win would see them finish fourth at a minimum, although they could potentially climb up to third depending on the result between Wales and Italy earlier in the day.
A third place finish would guarantee World Cup qualification for Scott Bemand's side, while it would also see them advance to the top tier of the WXV championship in the autumn.
But the Ireland senior coach has stressed that their motivation this week isn't around the prize on offer.
"The focus for us this week is the performance we bring against Scotland at Kingspan," McKee said.
"That's all we've focused in on, and what's in our control is how we approach that game and how we actually play in the game, the level of performance we bring.
"Other things, how we finish in the competition, depends on other things, maybe on other results, but certainly for us, we bring our best game to Kingspan and play really well, the positions in the table will look after themselves."
As things stand, Scotland hold third place heading into the weekend, while Italy and Ireland are both two points further back in the table, with the Italians ahead of Ireland on points difference.
With Wales and Italy finishing before Ireland and Scotland kick off, Bemand's side will know what their target is to potentially climb up to third in the table.
"Obviously, the other game is earlier than ours, so the result will be known, people will know what's required going into the game.
"That wouldn't be our primary focus as our motivator or our psychology going into the game. Our motivator will be our performance we can bring against Scotland, and bring a performance that will first and foremost make the team proud, but also for the supporters, that they can see a performance they can be proud of and get behind," McKee added.
Ireland have been boosted by the return of co-captain Sam Monaghan who missed out on last week's defeat to England, while Méabh Deely and Enya Breen also come into the side for Saturday's game at Kingspan Stadium.
There's also a potential debut off the bench for Sevens international Katie Heffernan, with the 25-year-old Mullingar native having impressed for the Wolfhounds in the Celtic Challenge.
And McKee says Heffernan is the latest example of the growing depth in the squad.
"Katie is a player who has been in the Sevens programme for a while. Across the two programmes there's certainly a lot more crossover now that the centralised programme is more established.
"Katie had some good opportunity to play XV's in the Celtic Challenge, showing she's a highly skilled player but also has a tough mental resolve to play well in her position in the centres.
"She was with us at the start of the campaign, went away to Hong Kong with the Sevens, and has been back training with us this week. As we always say, the people who put their hand up with their training performance also put their hands up for selection and she's certainly done that this week.
"We're starting to develop some more depth around our squad, you can see that from the selections, different players have come in and been able to perform at that level. That's very important for us going forward.
"Our conditioning and our general resilience to be able to play at the level of intensity of international rugby has really improved compared to this time 12 months ago, and I think it's reflected in the fact that we go into the last week of the campaign and pretty much all of our players are available for selection," he added.
While Scotland come into the game off an impressive win away to Italy which has lifted them up to sixth in the world rankings, Ireland have been picking up the pieces of an 88-10 hammering away to defending champions England last week.
But McKee says he's confident any lingering pain from that loss has been flushed from the system.
"Certainly, it was a tough week last weekend and really hard, coming up against England at Twickenham, they were on fire and we were probably a few percentage points below our best.
"The result was a consequence, but credit to Scott [Bemand], head coach, and the players, the way we addressed that in London before we departed for home.
"A credit to the players this week how they've really worked hard on the task. We've trained well, we've trained hard yesterday, and to set ourselves up in the best position to bounce back and put in a peak performance this week."
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