Wafer's breakthrough and IRFU influence: Five takeaways from Ireland's Six Nations campaign

Ireland's win over Scotland on Saturday secured a third-place finish in the Guinness Women's Six Nations table.

It was a tournament of ups and down but there was enough evidence to conclude that the team has made significant progress under their new head coach Scott Bemand.

Here we look at five takeaways from the tournament.

The Bemand factor

The table doesn't lie. This time 12 months ago, Ireland were bottom of the pile, finishing Greg McWilliams second Six Nations campaign with zero points.

After claiming two wins the previous year, it was a notable step backwards. It all played out to the sound of "outside noise", with the continued exclusion of Clíodhna Moloney and a story in the Telegraph that quoted a recent member of the squad airing multiple concerns about the set-up.

A few months later, Ireland captain Nichola Fryday retired from international rugby, thus becoming the second captain in two years to step away in their prime.

Given that the letter to the IRFU, signed by 62 current and former players who said they had no "trust" in the union was sent in December 2021, the women’s XVs programme seemed to have hit a new low.

Scott Bemand took over from McWilliams in the summer and led Ireland to a WXV3 title but it was the results from the spring campaign that franked the progress spoken about by the players.

Having stated that third place and automatic qualification was their aim, the team duly delivered. It wasn’t pretty at times but improvement was visible in all games bar the Twickenham thrashing.

There was much to admire for large spells of the game against Italy, the entire 80 minutes against Wales and the second half of the victory over Scotland. It all resulted in a top-three finish – in other words best of the