Anna Caplice: 'It will be hugely psychological for Ireland to win this weekend'

It was another really successful weekend for Ireland in terms of scoreline with a 64-3 win against Colombia. Last week I was hoping that they’d play a lot of heads-up rugby while at the same time using their systems confidently and I could see that in them a lot. I feel like across the board for Ireland this was a performance that touched on a lot of bases.

It wasn’t always perfect, but that’s coming from them trying some new things like stretching their attack more. Colombia really challenged them in a lot of ways. It’s massive for Colombia to be playing against a team like Ireland when nine Irish players have more caps than Colombia as a squad. 

Colombia’s women’s rugby team only started four years ago, they’ve had so many issues in starting. To get into WXV is a huge achievement for them. You could see it in the Colombia team, for them to be celebrating things like an Irish knock-on. You could see them jump up and down with their hands in the air at the end when Ireland were denied their final try, even though Colombia had lost by such a huge scoreline, it’s little things like that. 

Colombia will certainly feel like this is where they want to be, especially when they’ve got brilliant players like Camila Lopera. They had good kicking and game management at times, and really big communication. You can hear them on the microphones, they’re very good at communicating which is really very advanced for a team like Colombia that is so juvenile in terms of their experience. They were able to challenge and push Ireland.

Players like Fiona Tuite and Sadhbh McGrath coming off the bench made such an impact especially when the bodies around them were starting to tire. I was really impressed with that and it makes me very excited for the next wave of players. They are really using this to gather experience and across the board with lots of hours and lots of success, now coming into next weekend it’s going to be about fine-tuning it all. 

If you look at Linda Djougang, she’s their most capped player, she’s such a strong runner. There is a lot of hustle around her, a lot of players around her every time she carries to make sure that the ruck will be quick. At times I did find that the ruck speed was starting to slow up. 

It was impressive for most of the game, they focused on clearing out the ruck and having the ball presented early, but that did lag at times as well, something they could get punished for against strong opposition. There were errors as well but I think that’s come from them widening their ambition with what they want to achieve. Perhaps kicking a bit longer for touch and maybe missing touch, or maybe going for a complex lineout and it just skipping overhead, or little things like that they were trying. 

They were pushing themselves to be better, it’s never going to have a 100% success rate if you’re trying to improve like that, something which this Irish team needs to do. I’m not too worried about those errors because I admire the fact that they’re trying some new things to put together more jigsaw pieces.

We’ve seen some really great kicks, for example, Dannah O’Brien trying her crossfield kick, when the ruck was under pressure she came straight in and did a box kick. It’s just so exciting for her to get that experience as well and again use the safety net that they’ve been put in right now in WXV 3.

Elsewhere in WXV 3 Spain against Fiji was just brilliant. That was a real contest. Spain just about came away with the win, Fiji were pushing and pushing and it was such a battle. That was a huge game and really enjoyable. It’s one of those games I was talking about before that makes WXV 3 really exciting because the teams are kind of unknown, you’re not really sure what level they might present themselves. 

What I’m excited for with this Irish team is the fact that there are more and more Irish girls are becoming full-time rugby players. One thing I noticed from Ireland in the Colombia game and Kazakhstan as well was that the lineouts were really good at times which is good because the lineout had been a real bone of contention for Ireland in the last while. They’ve worked on their lineout, but what I’ve noticed is often the lifts are slow. 

I think that comes from perhaps an issue in timing which is normal for lineouts and especially normal when substitutes come onto the pitch, that’s all things you can work on. If a lineout lift is slow, it means that the lifters are lacking strength. 

If the lineout lift is slow and you’re lacking strength, that is something that you can work on over time. You can’t get stronger in just a Six Nations campaign when you’re going back into work on the Monday morning and you maybe have to take the Friday off work. Being a full-time athlete now means that recovery time can increase. 

Personally, the one time that I was able to train and play full-time was when I did a short season in Australia where I was able to train full-time. The difference I could feel in my own body in terms of feeling leaner and stronger and fitter, I was weighing more on the scales but I was looking leaner. I wasn’t training any more than I would have been doing with Ireland or with my club, but I was recovering more.

That is a huge difference. Not having to go into work Monday to Friday, or rushing to eat your dinner, or not getting enough water in a day. Teams can now train during the week, so with the new calendar World Rugby have this vision that women’s rugby will become increasingly professional. 

There has been a lot of reaction to the new World Rugby calendar this week. People have been quite cynical, maybe scared of a new calendar and there have been a lot of questions. For the women’s calendar, we’ve already got a start with a new calendar with having WXV. World Rugby have worked really hard for a long time with clubs, unions, players, fans. 

They’ve done an awful lot of interviews looking into what they can do to improve the game, get more international teams up to scratch and up to a level that they can compete at. With player welfare at the centre of it as well as continuing to realise that this is a business and it’s entertainment. 

I was quite surprised to hear that for WXV 1 there will be a gap there to allow a Lions tour. As a team who are in WXV 3 currently and probably still having teams like Scotland and Ireland potentially in WXV 2 by the time that comes around, I’d be very nervous. I’d be very disappointed if I was perhaps an Irish or a Scottish player to read that because the Lions is such a huge part of rugby history. 

They’re finally opening it up to the women’s game, but does that mean you have to choose between your country and the Lions? I don’t think that’s fair. I was a little bit disappointed about that and I’m intrigued as to how they’re going to make that work. A lot of the talk has been around how can you pick a Lions team when England have been so far superior for so long. 

You look at the Premiership, and some of the standout players in the Premiership where all of the English players are playing, are Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. If it was me and I was playing in the Premiership or even in my own league and I knew I was a standout player for my country, I’d be wanting to make sure that I was in contention for the Lions because that’s the opportunity of a lifetime. 

From an Irish perspective, I’m a bit worried for our league, the All-Ireland League. What England have achieved with the Premiership in terms of using that as the competition for the English players with them all playing in the same league balanced out among the teams. We could achieve something similar in Ireland with our league but I feel like the attention is being drawn away from that and is being put into an interprovincial plan. 

While if you’re an international player you’re not being dragged between your club and your country and do have definite time off, we have to make sure that the players who are not involved in the international window are still being catered for. 

It still needs to be a highly competitive window because that’s where your future international players come from. It’s also the heart of the game. You don’t have to be a future international player to be highly competitive, contributing to the quality of women’s rugby in your country. Although there is a lot of focus on what the unions are doing, we need to make sure that if you’re not in the pathway to play for Ireland, you’re still being heard, and you’re still being catered for. 

If we look ahead to this weekend, it’s a winner-takes-all match for the WXV 3 title. Spain will be quite battle-hardened. They might not be suffering as much in the heat as the Irish players have done. They may be in a better place coming into this game after having a very tough game versus Fiji and then Ireland having had two quite easy games to prep for Spain. 

It will be hugely psychological for Ireland to win this weekend, it would be very satisfying given that we lost to Spain and eventually then lost our qualification spot for RWC2021. That will be big for the players that were involved and also the girls that know what it means to play against Spain. At the same, it doesn’t actually matter what the outcome is as long as this is a team that’s going in the right direction. 

Spain looked really impressive, their scrum was dominant, even against a team like Fiji. They took their penalties, they played very smartly. They kicked their penalties and that was the difference for them in the end. Ireland have to be careful about their discipline because they know that Spain will punish them with kicks for anything inside the 40-metre line. 

Ireland haven’t been under the pump to take penalties like that. They’ve gone to the corner, they’ve had quick taps, but if it comes down to a narrow game, will Ireland look to kick those penalties? Given the strong kickers that we have in both Dannah O’Brien and Nicole Fowley, I don’t think it would be a worry, it’s just that tactically they haven’t had to think that way yet and Spain already managed to beat Fiji by using that tactic. 

I’m going for an Irish win but I think that anything can happen, especially given it’s the third week, in the desert, two different ways of preparation for both teams coming into the final round. It’s going to be interesting and I’m really looking forward to it.