Kathryn Dane believes Ireland are stronger and fitter than ever before ahead of their opening game of the 2021 Women’s Six Nations against Wales in Cardiff.
Ireland sat out the opening round of the new-look format for this year’s Championship, watching on as Pool B rivals France and Wales got their campaigns underway in Vannes.
Les Bleues defeated Wales 53-0 to take charge of the pool but it’s now Ireland’s turn to show what they can do when they visit Cardiff Arms Park on Saturday afternoon.
Griffin: The sky’s the limit for Ireland
Dane started all four of Ireland’s games in the 2020 Championship and the scrum-half believes they are better placed than ever before to cause an upset this year.
“The strength and conditioning part of our game has definitely doubled if not tripled since last year’s Six Nations – just because we’ve had so much time to work on it,” said the 24-year-old.
“Especially building up our robustness and physical resilience. I think as a smaller nation compared to the other countries, we’ve definitely worked on that and it’ll stand up well.
“In terms of our attack and defence, we’ve had Adam Griggs as our attack coach and Kieran Hallett as our defence coach, working on training us at an intensity that’s above match intensity.
“It’s so that we can perform at that really high tempo. In that sense, our scale execution, our decision-making, our intuition and instincts around the field should hopefully have improved.
“We won’t really know for certain until we get on the pitch on Saturday but hopefully that’ll show.
“I feel like we’re in the strongest position we’ve ever been as a squad and we’ve had all that time to grow as a team and we’re really feeling up for an upset.”
Adam Griggs’ side defeated Wales 31-12 in last year’s Women’s Six Nations before going on to finish in third place behind champions England and runners-up France.
And having had plenty of time to work on her game during the last year, Dane is looking forward to putting the improvements she’s made into practice in a gameday situation.
“I can’t speak for the other girls but I put an awful lot of pressure on myself and maybe it’s a scrum-half thing, I’m not sure, we’ve had so much time to work on ourselves,” she said.
Maggie Alphonsi on Round 1: ‘Blown away’ by Les Bleues while Cleall sisters show their class
“We’ve had time to work on every single detail that we have, I know myself I’m thinking hopefully this weekend is a chance to display what we have learnt.
“I suppose we’re in a very privileged position compared to other sports in that we have been able to train for those 20-plus weeks together.
“There is a little bit of an expectation on myself to go out there and show everyone what you’ve got and make the nation proud.”
