Could Ireland's mixed PWR and Celtic Challenge exposure lead to Six Nations rewards?

Irish fans would have liked what they saw when the TNT Sports cameras headed to the StoneX the weekend before St Patrick’s Day. Defending PWR Champions Gloucester Hartpury ended up victorious against the home side Saracens, but footage of the set-piece in particular caught the eye.

Two of Gloucester’s scores, both finished by number eight Alex Matthews, came directly from dominant scrums. The second saw the left hand side of the champion pack chew up their Sarries counterparts.

Those in that section of the scrum? Ireland’s Niamh O’Dowd and Sam Monaghan were still driving forward through the splintered set-piece as Matthews touched down.

Quite often in scrums, if the tight head wins their battle, the results end up showing on the loose head side. Maud Muir and hooker Kelsey Jones will certainly have taken their credit. But for those who have watched many an Irish scrum struggle in recent years, to see two internationals playing their part in a dominant pack was truly something.

Ireland have clearly improved in this area. A struggling scrum against France in last year’s Six Nations gave way to a strong display in a World Cup quarter-final against the same opposition. Clearly, though, O’Dowd made the move across the Irish Sea to accelerate that timeline of improvement.

Given Ireland’s ever increasing PWR involvement, how well prepared will Scott Bemand’s side be ahead of this weekend’s Six Nations opener?

O’Dowd, Brittany Hogan and Aoife Wafer all made the move to Gloucester, Sale and Harlequins respectively after last year’s World Cup. In Ireland’s Six Nations squad, 10 players currently play in the PWR. Nine of these are forwards, Nancy McGillivray the lone back.

With Erin King recently named as captain and Linda Djougang expected to remain a mainstay at tighthead, as many as six members of the Irish starting pack are likely to come from English clubs. Exeter’s Edel McMahon would only add to that equation if she hadn’t been ruled out of the tournament with a long-term knee injury.

Ireland are coming into this competition with a pack largely made up of PWR regulars and a backline featuring those who impressed in the recent Celtic Challenge. Is one group more battle ready than the other?

The easy answer is that the PWR is a better competition. There are more international players involved, raising skill level and physicality. More teams means a greater variety of game plans being tested week on week. There have been 16 PWR rounds this season, compared to 10 (plus semi-final and final) in the Celtic Challenge.

When Ireland put in a rusty display to open last year’s Six Nations against France, the dominant line amongst pundits was that the Celtic Challenge had not left them sharp enough between international windows.

In the Celtic Challenge, the two Irish teams contested the final. More often than not, they played with a dominant hand. Out-half Dannah O’Brien, centres Eve Higgins and Aoife Dalton and full-back Stacey Flood were all part of the Wolfhounds’ title-winning backline. How will they adjust to the likely situation of playing behind a pack being marched backwards against England? A similar scenario, Ireland’s World Cup pool defeat to the Black Ferns in Brighton, did not go so well.

Look at what is being said within the Ireland camp about their preparation. They certainly back themselves, and having control over the majority of their squad across two domestic teams certainly should build cohesion. But there is still a revealing pattern.

“The Celtic Challenge has actually been really important for us, and how we develop those two groups that we use,” Ireland head coach Scott Bemand said recently. “The Wolfhounds and The Clovers have got quite young packs. We’ll see the benefit of that in two years’ time, those players will come through. The back-lines are a little bit more experienced, so that allows us to hone our telepathy and our understanding of what people are doing at any given moment.”

The subtext isn’t even sub. In the forward pack certainly, the Celtic Challenge is about development. Not necessarily fine tuning ahead of top tier internationals.

How that changes is the intriguing thing. The IRFU has its plans to introduce domestic professionalism to the four provinces, presumably with a view to increasing the number of teams in the Challenge. Meanwhile, the PWR has invited women’s programmes across the UK and Ireland if they want to send teams to join their party.

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For now, Ireland is taking a best of both worlds approach. Send the likes of O’Dowd over to Gloucester for a standard of scrum tutelage not available elsewhere while building links between those who decide to stay. Some of the latter have taken to social media to reveal the midnight oil required for travel to Celtic Challenge training (have a scroll through Anna McGann’s Instagram page).

None of which should detract from Ireland’s strong current hand. They could well win three Six Nations matches for the first time since 2020. After scaring them in the World Cup, could a French scalp be possible?

Under the hood, nothing has really changed in the slow burn of Ireland’s domestic change. Except more players heading over the water post World Cup.

While waiting for the at-home playing offering to get up to scratch, you wouldn’t be surprised if more followed suit.