By Grainne McGuinness
Ireland’s women resume their Six Nations campaign on Friday night in Ashbourne against neighbours England.
Both sides go into the match with one win and one loss so far in the tournament and lock Sophie Spence told breakingnews.ie that both sides will have expectations of victory.
“Every game you play, you go out for the win, you always target to do that,” she said. “They'll be sitting in their camp at the same time saying the same thing as us.”
“As a squad, we're going for it, that's what we want to to do.”
Ireland’s second row, from England herself although now living in Ireland, admitted there is always an extra desire in the team to beat England.
“I suppose everyone always gears themselves up for this game especially,” she said. “Coming into the squad I can see everyone always gets a real big buzz. Obviously they do for every other game, but this one is a bit different.”
She didn’t however feel they were motivated by thoughts of revenge after last year’s World Cup. Ireland had their most successful campaign ever, beating existing World Champions New Zealand to top their group and book a semi-final place, before being defeated by England.
After the World Cup captain Fiona Coghlan and centres Grace Davitt and Lynne Cantwell retired and new faces have come in to replace them. Coach Philip Doyle also left, to be replaced by Tom Tierney.
“The World Cup was the World Cup and now this is a different squad,” Spence explained. “With so many retirements, we have new girls who wouldn't have been in the World Cup and so don't know about that.”
Spence said they now only thought of the last game against England in terms of knowledge to take into Friday night’s encounter.
She said: “You have to move on from that, you can't dwell on the past. You can use it to prepare for a better performance in the next game.”
Spence, who has been part of the Ireland set-up since 2012, said the newer members of the squad were finding their feet and she expected the squad would only improve as the new players settled in.
“Yeah, good,” she replied when asked how they were getting on. “There are girls in who we may not have that much experience with previously so this is their time to show what they can do and bring to the squad.
“We haven't had a great amount of time together yet. I expect as we have more time together we'll improve our performances again.”
Ireland had a ready-made excuse for their
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Spence admitted the situation was far from ideal, but was adamant that it not to blame for the 10-5 defeat.
“It's not a thing that you'd want,” she agreed. “I'd never been in that position before and I don't think any of the other players had.
“I suppose as players the thing is - how do you keep yourselves motivated, how do you keep yourselves switched on? I think as players and as management we managed to do that.”
The 27-year-old said the team’s defeat was due to other reasons.
“The unforced errors that we had and the final execution of things - that was the problem with our game, you know,” Spence said, and added that the focus was now all on England. “Looking forward to it, It's all about all these small margins and getting the preparation right.”
They are back in Ashbourne for this Friday night’s match.
“I hope that it won't happen again. Fingers crossed it all goes well and everything can go ahead as normal.”
When we asked Spence would she like to see the women’s team moved to a bigger arena she had mixed feelings about it, as she said the squad loved Ashbourne.
“I suppose in terms of the women's game, it's growing and so for spectators maybe a bigger venue could hold more people,” she answered. “But Ashbourne has a lovely pitch and the staff are brilliant.”
Here's hoping it proves a happy hunting ground for Ireland once more on Friday night.
Ireland v England, Friday February 27, kick-off 7.30pm.