‘That could have been 60’: Ireland coach ‘flat’ despite Wales win

Scott Bemand believes Ireland missed an opportunity to record a “statement victory” against Wales, despite watching his side win 40-14 in Newport.

The visitors recovered from conceding the opening try to run in six tries at Rodney Parade and strengthen their grip on third place in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations.

Forwards Linda Djougang, Aoife Wafer and Dorothy Wall each crossed the whitewash twice in south Wales as the hosts’ wait for a first win under Sean Lynn extends for at least one more week.

However, Ireland head coach Bemand felt his players could have registered a bigger score had they kept their foot on the gas in the final quarter.

“Look, we’ve won a second on the bounce away from home. So always reflect on your victories,” he said.

“We said doing the same as what we did last year, two wins in the competition with the three [matches] that we probably should win away. We’ve managed to achieve that.

“I think there’s bits of performance out there that I actually feel a little bit flat about because I think we’ve left a lot of points out there.

“I’d hoped to lay down a bit of a statement victory and I think that we had probably 16, 18 minutes at the end there where we could have kicked on and that could have been 50, 60.

“With the young group there was a whole piece of occasion around here and handling playing a Wales group that, you know, are brilliantly Welsh. They were always going to make the breakdown hard and we kind of allowed that to happen.”

Captain Edel McMahon agreed with her coach: “I definitely think we were a bit slow to start, probably allowed Wales to come at us as opposed to imposing ourselves.

“We were quite aware of the challenge that they have set against England, against France, in their games against those. Wales came out and scored first against England.

“So, it probably wasn’t a shock to us and we knew we had to stay patient in our system, in our process.

“But like Scott said, a win away with a scoreline like that, it’s actually a big achievement, but we’re all hungry for more and we know we left a lot out there.”