Eight years later and as Ireland prepare to take on New Zealand in the early hours of Monday morning in Vancouver, the young squad will look to use the WXV1 tournament as an opportunity to gain experience ahead of a World Cup year.
By virtue of winning WXV3 in Dubai two years ago, and their third-place finish in the Six Nations, Ireland have qualified for the World Cup early and earned themselves Tests against three of the best teams in the game.
Ireland will be going into the tournament full of confidence off the back of a 36-10 victory over Australia. Matches against Canada and the USA await in addition to the Black Ferns Test and scrum-half Molly Scuffil-McCabe is excited about the opportunity.
“In our heads there is the World Cup in England next year, but we are 12 months out, but these next few weeks are a huge opportunity for us to grow as a squad. It’s a huge opportunity to play New Zealand who we haven’t played since 2016.
“It’s also the first time to play Canada since I think the same time. We last played USA in 2021 so opportunities like this don’t come often. But thankfully with the WXV tournaments We have an opportunity to play some of the best in the world . . . teams that we might be playing in the World Cup next year. They could be in our pool, we don’t know,” Scuffil-McCabe said.
Ireland will play their opening game in BC Place, an indoor arena with an astroturf surface and McCabe says the nice weather at the end of camp and the indoor facilities in Abbotstown have helped massively for their preparation.
“We’re getting good weather here now and we’re prepped for an indoor situation. So, I don’t know if the conditions will have much of an impact. I’m just excited to get over,” she said.
Despite the tough assignments ahead, Scuffil-McCabe believes the team are ready to capitalise on any opportunities they get.
“I think we’re going to have to cherry-pick our moments. We’re going to look at parts of the game that we want to go after and that’s going to determine what success looks like. We always say we want to fire shots, so we’ll sit down and look at what success looks like to us.
“It’s going to be a challenge, they are second, third and fourth in the world respectively, so it’s going to be a difficult one. We’re aware of the challenge that is at hand, but we’re also relishing it as an opportunity to get a crack at these teams,” said the 26-year-old scrum-half, who insists the team will only grow from the experience, no matter the results.
“We break it down afterwards, and we have a review process that helps with that. We enjoy the wins, but you go back and look and see what opportunities you didn’t take and it’s never a case of patting ourselves on the back and forgetting about it. You’re always nitpicking and seeing what more we can do in those moments.
“You just set those goals out beforehand and go back and review. And sometimes it’s a loss and sometimes it’s a hard review. But that’s you learn a lot from failures.”
Ireland get their campaign under way against New Zealand at 3.0am on Monday morning, 7.0pm local time and the game will be streamed on RugbyPass TV.