Ireland Women: Six Nations Review

Ireland Women’s Six Nations campaign was paused on the 20th March 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Ireland had completed three of the four rounds scheduled up to then, beating Scotland and Wales before coming up short against England.

This leaves Ireland in third place on 9 points with big tests still to come with France and Italy still to play.

TEAMPLWDIFFBPPTS
 England 44145319
 France 3279311
 Ireland 32(4)19
 Italy 21(31)04
 Scotland 20(57)11
 Wales 40(132)11

You can view our match reports for the three completed fixtures here:

There has been a big increase in stat availability for the women’s game from Women Six Nations so we will have a look at the performances over the three games to date.

Ireland Women Players Used

There were a total of 29 players named across the three match day squad though only 27 clocked up game time according to the records. It is those 27 players that we will be looking at.

The “provincial” break down was 11 Leinster, 6 IQ Rugby, 6 Munster, 3 Connacht and 1 Ulster. However, looking at the breakdown by minutes played, IQ Rugby move into second place on their own clocking up over 27% of the minutes played.

Leinster continue as the dominant province with over 37% of minutes played but interestingly they are not as dominant as their men or U20’s in the Ireland squads.

Three IQ Rugby players, , and were in the top six of minutes played. Delany was the only player to play every minute, a late injury against England preventing Leinster’s doing the same.

was the most used front row player clocking up an average of 67 minutes per game and Ulster’s sole representative comes in at 6th place with an average of 63 minutes per match.

PlayerClubProvinceMinutes
Lauren DelanyFirwood WaterlooIQ Rugby240
Edel McMahonWaspsIQ Rugby235
Sene NaoupuOld BelvedereLeinster235
Anna CapliceHarlequinsIQ Rugby226
Linda DjougangOld BlevedereLeinster202
Kathryn DaneOld BelvedereUlster188

Ireland Women Scorers

Ireland have scored 49 points over the three games, including a penalty try against Wales. Allocating the penalty try to the forwards gives a 50-50 split on tries scored between the forwards and the backs with 4 each.

Discounting the penalty try, the remaining scores came primarily from IQ Rugby players who contributed almost 43% of the remaining total.

Connacht youngster and IQ Rugby’s topped the points and try scoring tables with 2 tries apiece and, in a disappointing tournament for kicking with Ireland only posing a 29% conversion rate, Munster’s bagged 4 points from 2 successful conversions. IQ Rugby’s adds Ireland’s only successful penalty.

PlayerClubProvincePTSTRY
Beibhinn ParsonsBallinasloeConnacht102
Cliodhna MoloneyWaspsIQ Rugby102
Lauren DelanyFirwood WaterlooIQ Rugby51
Linda DjougangOld BlevedereLeinster51
Sene NaoupuOld BelvedereLeinster51
Claire KeohaneRailway UnionMunster40
Ellen MurphyGloucesterIQ Rugby30

Ireland Women Metres Made.

Ireland women clocked up 2,446 meters with the ball in hand which compares favourably with the free scoring U20’s who carried 2,303 meters over their games. However, the Ireland women’s forwards carried more frequently accounting for 54.3% of total carries compared to 49.8% for the U20’s.

Leinster players made the bulk of the carries at 44.8%. Interestingly, Ireland clocked up an average of just under 1,000 meters a game against Scotland and Wales but this dropped to 472 meters against England.

Despite only being available for 2 games, Connacht’s Parsons topped the metres carried table thanks to a couple of length of the field runs. Djougang and clocked up impressive figures for front row players, either side of backrower Caplice.

PlayerClubProvinceMeters
Beibhinn ParsonsBallinasloeConnacht255
Sene NaoupuOld BelvedereLeinster206
Linda DjougangOld BlevedereLeinster199
Anna CapliceHarlequinsIQ Rugby194
Lindsay PeatRailway UnionLeinster180
Eimear ConsidineUL BohemianMunster169

Ireland Women Tackles Completed

Leinster players dominated the tackles completed over the three games accounting for just over 43% of the 557 tackles completed. The total compares favourably with the U20’s who clocked up 558 tackles over their three games.

As you would expect the forwards competed the lion’s share of the tackles accounting for 67% of the total and this is reflected in the table below with Sene Naoupu the only back to make the top 6.

Edel McMahon tops the table with an average of 15 per game, Leinster’s the highest completion rate at 95%.

PlayerClubProvinceCompleteMissed
Edel McMahonWaspsIQ Rugby458
Anna CapliceHarlequinsIQ Rugby376
Judy BobbettBlackrockLeinster362
Aoife McDermottRailway UnionLeinster366
Linda DjougangOld BlevedereLeinster343
Sene NaoupuOld BelvedereLeinster307

It may be a bit previous to look at our players of the tournament. There is still a distinct possibility that the two remaining games may still be played, but there are a few players worthy of note at this time.

Parsons stole the initial headlines with her length of the pitch, match saving, try against Scotland and backed it up with another against Wales before returning to her studies. It’s also hard to overlook McMahon’s big tackle count and in this pair we have players doing exactly what they should be doing in their respective positions.

However, there were a three players that added a bit more. Caplice appears in the top six in three of the four criteria above and Djougang and Naoupu produced top six stats across all four.

At the minute we are flagging the performances of Linda Djougang. The Ireland scrum got off to a bad start against Scotland but it did improve throughout the three matches. For a front row player, especially one coming to terms with the international scrum, the minutes played, meters made and tackles competed are impressive and the Old Belvedere player would be our current frontrunner for Irish Player of the Tournament.

Ireland Women All Players All Stats

Members can view all the Ireland Women Players Stats, for the three games to date, below. You must be signed in to view.

Click the table to enlarge.

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