Courtney Keight excited for Wales to ‘rewrite the narrative’ in Six Nations

It is almost impossible to undersell how much of a disappointment the past two years have been for Wales.

In the Guinness Women’s Six Nations the side have picked up wooden spoon in consecutive years. They exited the Women’s Rugby World Cup at the group stage and concluded a fruitless three-week tournament with a loss to Fiji.

Now, ahead of the 2026 edition of the Women’s Six Nations, there is a feeling that the only way is up for Wales.

This Spring head coach Sean Lynn will take charge of Wales in his third tournament since taking on the role in mid-March last year. Calling those first 365 days a baptism of fire does not quite do it justice.

In the wake of their Women’s Rugby World Cup exit, Lynn stated a desire for his players to gain more game time instead of just being fringe players at Premiership Women’s Rugby clubs.

Those words have clearly made an impact. 25 of his Women’s Six Nations squad having played in the Celtic Challenge this season as Wales’ two franchises – Brython Thunder and Gwalia Lightning – made it to the semi-finals.

Domestic success is just one of the reasons there is an optimism in South Wales.

“The main emotion at the moment is just excitement,” Courtney Keight, who wins her 29th Test cap this weekend, told RugbyPass. “We’re super excited to be together as a group. There’s fresh faces, both coaching staff and players, and we’ve got a massive match to kick-off the campaign. It is just excitement that everyone’s feeling at the moment.

“Positivity is just what we feel. We didn’t put our best foot forward during the World Cup. Since then we’ve reviewed. We’ve grown areas of the game that we needed to grow.

“The Celtic Challenge has been really, really strong. It just feels like a fresh start. Especially with the World Cup in three years’ time. It just feels like a new cycle.”

Wales welcome Scotland to Cardiff’s Principality Stadium this Saturday afternoon for the tournament opener. It will be the first time the Scots have been led by their new head coach, Sione Fukofuka, who is assisted by ex-Wales boss Ioan Cunningham.

It will be a big clash in so many more ways than one. When Keight’s international career started around 1,000 people were present at the fixture. The notion of playing a game at the Principality Stadium seemed a long way away. Now Wales are playing at the venue for a third straight year.

Of course, there is no running away from the disappointment of recent years. Wales finished 2024 and 2025 editions of the Women’s Six Nations rooted to the bottom of the table.

But a new tournament offers Wales the room to reinvent themselves and arrest the slide.

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“Performance is number one,” Keight said. “I think being able to rewrite out narrative and show that we’ve got such a talented team and talented coaches. Just being able to put our best foot forward, come away with performances that we’re proud of is going to be huge for us.

“With those performances, we’re hoping to get some wins. A massive thing for us is inspiring the next generation and getting as many people as we can to our games.”

Like most of the teams heading into this year’s Women’s Six Nations, Wales have had an alteration to their coaching staff. At the end of the March, Lynn welcomed Steve Salvin and Ashley Beck to his coaching staff on an interim basis at the end of March.

As the head coach of PWR’s Exeter Chiefs, Salvin has led the Devon club to third place in the table and will take charge of the forwards. Beck arrives as attack coach and has been head coach of Celtic Challenge side Brython Thunder for the past two seasons.

Keight has gotten to know Beck well in recent months. After injury delayed her Sale Sharks debut this season, the 28-year-old turned out in the midfield for Beck’s side, including their semi-final defeat to eventual Celtic Challenge champions Wolfhounds.

“He is the most positive coach I have ever had,” Keight said. “Everything you do he’ll put a positive spin on it. Which, especially as a female athlete, is huge.

“Obviously there’s criticism if you’ve done something wrong, there’s learnings as to why you’ve done it but everything that you do, you have a positive outcome from it.

“I think his positivity is going to be huge in the squad. He just wants us to play exciting rugby. He wants us to be brave. His knowledge and experience of the game is going to be massive for us.”

Keight spoke to RugbyPass on the day Canterbury of New Zealand were appointed the official rugby boot provider to Wales Women’s Rugby. The three year agreement will see players provided with two pairs of boots per season.

Players from Wales’ senior side, Under-21s and Under-18s will receive Canterbury’s leading boot models as he heritage rugby brand continues to play an active role in supporting the growth and development of women’s rugby.

Wales start their 2026 Women’s Six Nations campaign at the Principality Stadium this weekend against Scotland. Keight has been named to start in the midfield alongside Trailfinders Women’s Carys Cox. Her Brython teammates Seren Singleton and Jorja Aiono will make their international debuts as starters in the match day 23.

The first opportunity to put a miserable two years behind them, Keight certainly has optimism about what the next six weeks could have in store for the squad.

 

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Even so much as Wales want to push the memory of recent seasons to the back of their mind, they are also instructive. Months of reviews and recollections mean that Keight and her teammates know some of the quick fixes that can lead to a brighter future.

“Being brave is huge,” Keight said. “We’ve sometimes fallen into the trap of going back to simple, using the forward and not really using the backs when we feel the game slipping away from us.

“I think we need to not go into ourselves. I think consistency in our catch-pass accuracy, consistency in our tackle dominance. There’s definitely statistics that we’ll take away from each game ant look at consistency among them – but definitely just being brave and backing ourselves.

“We’re here because we’re a good team. So let’s show that. If things don’t go our way, being able to consistently get back up off the floor and fix what’s going wrong as quickly as possible. That’s an area we’ve needed to work on.”