{"id":394741,"date":"2026-04-12T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394741\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:11:10","slug":"encouragement-for-ireland-despite-defeat-in-twickenham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394741\/","title":{"rendered":"Encouragement for Ireland despite defeat in Twickenham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Sunday, 12 April 2026 13:27\n <\/p>\n

\n By Mark Hanbidge\n <\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\n It finished 33-12 as England and Ireland got their Six Nations campaigns underway.\n <\/p>\n

Ireland women’s rugby began their Women’s Six Nations campaign with a 33-12 defeat to England women’s rugby at Twickenham Stadium.<\/p>\n

Ireland found themselves 21-0 down at half-time but produced a much-improved second-half display, matching the hosts for long spells and preventing the game from running away from them. The performance came in front of a record crowd of 77,120.<\/p>\n

Head coach Scott Bemand pointed to positives after the game, particularly given Ireland had scored just 15 points combined in this fixture across five years.<\/p>\n

However, there was also a sense that more could have been taken from the contest. Ireland created opportunities but did not fully capitalise, while costly moments allowed England to build their advantage.<\/p>\n

Despite the result, the second-half response offers a platform to build on as the campaign continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday, 12 April 2026 13:27 By Mark Hanbidge It finished 33-12 as England and Ireland got their Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,28328,3770,43],"class_list":["post-394741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kfm","tag-kildare","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}