Ireland Women ended their Rugby World Cup 7’s campaign in Moscow yesterday afternoon, achieving their stated aim of a top eight finish and qualifying for next season’s Sevens World Series.

Unsurprisingly, after a long season of International and Sevens rugby, for most of the squad, it’s no surprise that the team ran out of puff on the final day of the tournament losing both their play off matches in the knock out stages of the competition.

First up was a heartbreaking 14 – 5 loss to the USA in the tournament quarter-finals. Amy Davis put Ireland 5 – 0  in front with a well worked try and the girls in green defended strongly to keep their advantage till the last two minutes. Unfortunately the US ran in two late converted tries to progress to the semi final with Ireland dropping to plate competition where they faced old rivals England.

A 22 – 0 loss to the old enemy took some gloss of Ireland’s tournament, with England’s Katy Mclean, Kat Merchant, Alice Richardson, Joanne Watmore all scoring in a convincing win. The Ireland ladies will be disappointed to have reversed the recent dominance they have had over their near neighbours but I’m sure they will store this result away to bring out next season!

With no play-off of 7th place the Irish girls had to content themselves with watching the rest of the tournament finals, enjoying a few hours down time at the end of a very busy season!

It has been a season of great success for Irish Women’s Rugby with their first ever Grand Slam and their strong performances in their sevens outings. However it has been disappointing that both camps have relied on a fairly small core of the same players with few rising stars coming through the sevens development pipeline.

Of course it’s early days and these things take time but next season is going to be very interesting to see how the relationship between the Sevens Squad and the National Squad develops. Ireland’s interests should switch to defending their Six Nations Crown in preparation for THE Women’s World Cup in France in 2014 where they have a genuine chance of reaching the semi-finals and the Sevens Squad should begin the long task of developing a separate squad of sevens specialists in preparation for the Olympics in 2016.

With limited playing numbers, of the required quality, there are going to be a few difficult decisions for the bulk of this seven’s squad as doubling up for inclusion in both disciplines will not be to the overall benefit of either the individual players or the long term good of Women’s Rugby in Ireland.

However the relative success of both codes does open a huge range of opportunities for women players over the next few seasons – lets hope that the pathways are there to give them the opportunity to get to the top.

Ireland Women’s Sevens Squad: Jenny Murphy,  Claire Molloy, Sophie Spence, Jeanette Feighery, Larissa Muldoon, Lynne Cantwell, Alison Miller, Shannon Houston, Amy Davis, Ashleigh Baxter, Laura O’Mahony, Nikki Caughey.