This is in stark contrast to their FAI soccer equivalents who are also in action this weekend
2026 Guinness Women’s Six Nations Championship Round 1, Allianz Stadium, Twickenham, England 11/4/2026
England vs Ireland – Aoife Wafer salutes fans after a match played in front of 77,120 spectators(Image: ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo)
The Ireland womens rugby side to face Italy at Dexcom Park, Galway, will have ten players based in Ireland and five playing in the English PWR in the starting XV.
Centralised contracts at home range from €15-30k and it is preferred that Irish players are based in Ireland.
The season for these players operates around High Performance Unit training camps, playing in a Celtic Challenge league where Leinster/Ulster and Munster/Connacht teams have fixtures against Wales and Scottish-based units; there is also the inter-provincial series and the AIL league.
The High Performance Unit is in Dublin and, noticeably. The 10 Ireland players starting against Italy this week play for Leinster AIL clubs.
All the odder given that Limerick side UL Bohs, coached by Niamh Briggs, are reigning champions and are in the final again this year (April 26th vs Blackrock College).
The five English-based players play in the semi-professional RFU-run Premiership Womens Rugby where Gloucester-Hartpury are the reigning champions of a nine club division.
The entire England Red Roses Six Nations squad (38 players plus seven named injured extras) and considered the best pound-for-pound team in the world are here.
Wales has almost two-thirds of their 38-strong squad in there although they operate as a system where you can play WPL and still be selected for the Celtic Challenge games.
Scotland had a pre-Six Nations camp of 50 players of which two-fifths were in WPL (and three in France).
Ireland face Italy in Galway today and 10 of the 23-strong visiting matchday squad are playing for semi-pro clubs in France.
While there are another 30-or-so players from top-ranked international countries such as New Zealand, Canada, USA, and Australia; averaged out, each WPR side is likely has seven or eight internationally capped players each week.
Moreover, the Ireland matchday squad for Italy comprises 23 players and only one WPR player is a back; there are four forwards on the starting team and four forwards among the subs which might suggest the week-on-week physicality of the WPR is better than what Ireland offers.
Ireland coach Scott Bemand insists otherwise, stating that basing the players here gives the coaching staff ‘control’.
“The benefit of girls that are based in Ireland is that is that we have control over the training and the intensity of training,” insists Bemand.
“So, for example, someone like a Ruth Campbell (who has come in for Exeter-based Dorothy Wall this week), we’ve been working with Ruth now for best part of a couple of years.
“She came into a programme, young, raw, and in terms of the athletic development that she’s had over those two years and the intensity that she’s been able to train at, this is something that we can say we saw when she came onto the pitch last week against England – and it’s a really important piece.”
Ireland star back-row Aoife Wafer admitted recently she took a pay cut to sign for Harlequins claiming she wanted to play at the highest standard week in, week out.
But Bemand, who came to the Ireland set-up in 2023 following being part the Red Roses coaching staff from May 2015 to April 2023, remains unconvinced
“Even in the Roses set-up over in England, there’s always going to be a gap between the domestic competition and elite competition so over there, obviously the players spend a lot of time with the clubs rather than what we do in a centralised program.
“I’m aware that there’s gaps that they have to cover over there so when we get players back, especially for the Six Nations, there is usually an adjustment phase when returning to the Ireland piece which is linked into the training ID.”
Ireland (vs Italy): Stacey Flood (Railway Union/Leinster); Béibhinn Parsons (Blackrock College/Connacht), Aoife Dalton (Old Belvedere/Leinster), Nancy McGillivray (Exeter Chiefs), Robyn O’Connor (Old Belvedere/Leinster)*; Dannah O’Brien (both Old Belvedere/Leinster), Emily Lane (Blackrock College/Munster)
Ellena Perry (Gloucester-Hartpury), Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald (Exeter Chiefs), Linda Djougang, Ruth Campbell, Fiona Tuite (all Old Belvedere/Ulster), Brittany Hogan (Sale Sharks), Erin King (Old Belvedere/Leinster) capt, Aoife Wafer (Harlequins)
Replacements: Neve Jones, Niamh O’Dowd (both Gloucester-Hartpury), Sadhbh McGrath (Cooke/Ulster), Dorothy Wall (Exeter Chiefs), Sam Monaghan (Gloucester-Hartpury), Katie Whelan (Old Belvedere/Leinster), Eve Higgins, Anna McGann (both Railway Union/Connacht).