Chiefs duo suffer Six Nations defeat
By Harry Scott-Munro
12/4/21
It was disappointment for Exeter Chiefs pair Niamh Terry and Meg Davies in the Women’s Six Nations Championship, as Wales suffered their second defeat of the tournament, this time to a clinical Irish side, who triumphed 45-0 at the Cardiff Arms Park.
The game followed a similar pattern to last weekend’s match away in France, as Ireland raced into a dominant 31-point lead at half-time thanks to doubles from Beibhinn Parsons and Eimear Considine, plus a further try from Sene Naoupu.
A significantly improved second-half effort from Wales kept their visitors honest, but the Irish added further scores through Dorothy Wall and impressive fly-half Hannah Tyrrell.
Chiefs’ scrum-half Davies, winning just her second Test cap, entered the action midway through the first half, replacing Jess Roberts. She again impressed, producing several well-executed box-kicks and a darting break into the Irish 22 midway through the second half.
Full-back Terry was also impressive, having arrived into the action just after half-time for Kerin Lake. Despite limited opportunities to show what she could do with ball in hand, the young back showed several touches of class and awareness in defence, as her side’s performance improved significantly in the second forty minutes of action.
It’s been a tough start for new Wales Head Coach Warren Abrahams and he admitted that he was disappointed with the performance of his side.
“We’re weren’t good enough in the first half, we were really poor and we’ve addressed that in the changing room. If we want to compete and win test matches at this level, we must turn up with a different mindset and unfortunately that wasn’t good enough today. We didn’t get our set-piece right and didn’t physically dominate the game.”
With his side now guaranteed to be playing in the 5th/6th place play-off, Abrahams believes his side need to go “back to the drawing board” in order to improve their performances.
“We’re obviously very early on in our journey, it takes a bit of time,” he added. “We’ve got to go back to the drawing board, figure it out and look at our preparation. We’ll review, look at our individual performances and units across the board. We’ve got to go back and we’ve got to work out where we went wrong. Then we’ve got to reset.”