England defeat will not affect our confidence, insists Dorothy Wall

There was a multitude of ways that the Ireland forward could have continued her sentence as she stood in the mixed zone of Twickenham on Saturday evening.

This loss has its own magnitude.

An 88-10 thrashing by England. 14 tries conceded by Ireland. It was the highest points total ever scored by England against Ireland in the history of the Women’s Six Nations, with the final scoreline missing the record margin of defeat by a point (Ireland lost 79-0 in 2002).

Overall, it was the heaviest defeat in the championship since 2019 when England beat Scotland 80-0 at Twickenham.

The Red Roses were sublime on Saturday and delivered their best performance of the year in front of 48,778, while the visitors looked so out of their depth against the calibre of the number one ranked team in the world.

Ireland defence coach Declan Danaher spoke last week about players being ready to go to a “dark place” defensively but England attacked them so relentlessly it was like Ireland didn’t have time to find the light switch. It leaves you wondering when we will see a time again when Ireland can be competitive with England.

The Ireland players were living out the worst-case scenario on the pitch so it wouldn’t have been a surprise if players looked utterly crushed in the the media zone.

But there was a defiance about Dorothy Wall and the reason she felt this defeat was different was because they have belief in what they’re doing compared to before.

“This loss feels a bit different to others because we all have full faith in our system, we all have each other’s backs. There was never a moment – despite what the play looked like – that we stopped backing each other and stopped fighting,” Wall said.

“Obviously it’s very deflating to lose in a scoreline like that. We’ve lots of learnings. Where they are in the world rankings for a reason, we saw that today.”

Wall has been a big advocate of the new culture – led by Seán Ryan – in this squad. That will get a good road-testing for their final game against Scotland in Belfast next Saturday. Will this crushing day affect the belief in the squad for this finale?

“I don’t think it will affect us. We’ll take the learnings and we’ll move on. Our culture and how we look out for each other is so strong.

“It’s the backbone of everything we’re doing. It’s why you still believe after games like that.

​“You still believe that we’re going somewhere and it’s because of the huge work that’s been done within the team, how we look after each other, where we’re going. It’s so different to where an Irish women’s rugby team has ever been in terms of culture,” Wall added.

“We’re not going to stay too long on this. We’ve got a big game next week, take our learnings, move forward, train hard, attack next Saturday.”

Not to oversell what’s on the line but there’s an automatic place for next year’s Rugby World Cup up for grabs in the final round next weekend for whichever team finishes third. Scotland, who’re back up to third after four rounds, go into this game having made history with a first win in Italy on Saturday.

“I think we’re a really stable group. I think we’re honest enough to go, ‘bits of that isn’t good enough’ but that will be alright. As long as we can turn it around and take the lessons and go and do something about it,” Ireland head coach Scott Bemand said on Saturday evening.

“How does that feed somebody’s appetite for next week? I tell you what, I reckon we got a room full of people that are desperate to go and play that game straight away.

“I’d like to believe that we get some bounce back from that. Even though we’ve got to dust ourselves off but we’ll retain the confidence and momentum that we had previous to this and we’ll go out and put in a performance there that people can be proud of in Ireland.”