Following on from last Friday’s travel fiasco in Paris, our friends at ScrumQueens have forwarded their latest piece on Irish Women’s Rugby.

The fall-out from last week’s disastrous travel debacle for the Irish women’s rugby team has had one good outcome with the IRFU committing today to “new strategy regarding the development of Sevens and matches outside the Six Nations window” writes Ali Donnelly.

Some bad stories do have tentatively positive endings and no more so than the IRFU’s changed stance today when, in reply to questioning about their treatment of women’s rugby, they were somewhat coerced into committing to a new strategy for the game which they say has been “accelerated” this week.

But for those of us with long-held genuine concerns about the development of the game in Ireland in the four years since the IRFU took over the full management of women’s rugby, it’s hard to get too excited until any real changes are made.

So why the concerns about the game in Ireland?

Well Ireland’s mammoth journey to Pau last week has been pretty well documented. What should have been a relatively short hop to southern France turned into a 17 hour nightmare for the team, arriving at their destination at 7am before playing a game of test rugby later that afternoon.

You could debate all day long about how the team could and should have travelled (the IRFU maintain travelling via Paris regardless of the margin for error was the best way to do it) but that isn’t really the key point at all.

In response to queries from myself and other Irish newspapers this week, the IRFU stated the following.

“Since women’s rugby became integrated with the IRFU in 2004 the annual budget purely for the senior Ireland Women’s team has been increased from €30,000 to €230,000, reflecting the intention of the IRFU to fully support the development of the Women’s team.”

There are two problems with this.

Firstly the IRFU didn’t take over the running of the women’s game from the IWRFU until 2008 so this is simply totally inaccurate and secondly if the IRFU are spending €230,000 on the national team every year then they are getting the worst value for money imaginable.

Take 2011 as an example. Ireland played the 6 Nations and then shut up shop till the end the year as planning started for the 2012 tournament. So no games, no camps, no high performance sessions (apart from regional weight training) nothing from the end of the 6 Nations to the end of the year so hardly enough to spend the budget allocated.

When the IWRFU existed, run by a voluntary board (which I should say included myself where I was the Irish Women’s Team PRO for six years), Ireland usually played two 6 Nations warm-up games, against the British Police and Spain. Now with a lot more money reportedly at their disposal they are playing less games than ever and putting up with travel plans totally unsuitable to any international team.

In those days as well as that the Irish squad always travelled to the European Championships despite it literally being done on a shoestring. This is the first year since that competition became a four year tournament that Ireland haven’t taken part. Wales and Scotland have also declined to take part this year but crucially that’s because they have switched their focus to 7s this summer – Ireland have no such excuse.

It was at the 2008 AGM that the IWRFU was formally disbanded and the IRFU took over responsibility for all aspects of women’s rugby. Since then the IRFU have gradually ignored many of the agreements around the running of women’s rugby that were agreed as part of the process of integration. If the IRFU disagree with that then they simply need to read the integration document.

Specifically and most importantly it was agreed that a women’s committee would be established with a direct link to the IRFU domestic games committee. This committee existed for three seasons but appears to have been disbanded since the end of last season. It has not met since March 2011 effectively meaning the IRFU have not been answerable to anybody on any aspects of women’s rugby which hasn’t helped prevent situations like this arising or reoccurring.

The lack of 7s investment or interest however is the one of real shame. We all know how the women’s 7s game is advancing at haste. Ireland are nowhere to be seen on the stage and are in danger of being so far behind that having any hopes of getting a shot at the Olympics in 2016 are already pretty slim. Ireland are now in a pot with Slovenia and Luxembourg as the only rugby playing nations in Europe not to have entered the qualification paths for the next World Cup which is so short-sighted by the IRFU as to be embarrassing.

It’s worth noting that Ireland have  played 7s – at the 2007 European Championships where they performed well enough to finish in the top five and at the 2006 edition they were fourth.  It goes to show that Ireland have the ability to compete at that level but time is running out as more and more teams advance on that front. Ireland have simply gone backwards since then at this level of the game.

And you can’t say there is no money – there’s €230,000 knocking about somewhere after all.

Of course in four years there has been some progress – each province now has a women’s development officer and I have no doubt that their work will take hold but progress in Ireland is painfully slow.

The IRFU have not committed to developing players at the top level beyond the national squad – there is still no A side, no U20s side, no other representative side at all. How Ireland continue to finish third in the 6 Nations defies all resource logic. Hopefully this new strategy will change that because in a country with less than 2,000 players with a top league still dominated by just two or three clubs, the top players need to play higher quality rugby far more often than five times a year.

Credit is due to former Irish player Jeannette Feighery who bravely put her head about the parapet and had her views printed in the Irish Times this week. That takes guts.