last Saturday\u2019s opening-round defeat to England at Twickenham.<\/a>\n <\/p>\nWhile there is frustration that a rusty first half gifted the world champions and defending title holders a 21-0 headstart, a gutsy second-half from Ireland redressed some of the balance, the two teams drawing the final 40 minutes 12-12 with McGann coming off the bench to get her team off the mark with the first of two tries for the visitors, captain Erin King scoring the other in 33-12 loss.<\/p>\n
The chance to make amends for the defeat is top of the priority list for Scott Bemand\u2019s side, as she explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we did create things, we just probably didn’t finish them,\u201d McGann said. \u201cAnd there were opportunities there that we left on the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think rolling into next week, they are quite easy fixes and we’ve a home game in Dexcom which will be really exciting and we’ll have the home crowd so hopefully that’ll bring us up for it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Irish travel, we have to give it to them. There was some serious Irish support in the crowd there today but nothing beats a home game. So yeah, we’re really looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re absolutely buzzing for it. We knew this was going to be a really challenging one for the first one, and we really had to get up for it. But I still think it is all to play for. And we’re really excited for the next few games coming, the home games and the one away in France as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Playing a part in a game which attracted a Women\u2019s Six Nations-record crowd of 77,120 to Twickenham made McGann\u2019s try all the more special but the wing enjoyed the whole occasion and said Ireland were getting used to increased crowds after their experience at the World Cup last autumn, with their pool match against New Zealand\u2019s Black Ferns drawing 30,000 supporters to Brighton\u2019s Amex Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unbelievable. To be fair, I think the World Cup probably prepped us well for it. When we came into the stadium yesterday for the captain’s run, we were looking at it, and it’s kind of just an extra layer onto the Brighton game, an extra tier onto it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe World Cup prepped us. Some of the girls who played here two years ago were ready for it. We probably weren’t ready for it back then, but we were definitely ready for it now. I think we embraced the crowd and we fed off the energy, and we fed off the Irish support that were there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we’re now at a stage with women’s rugby in Ireland, this is to be expected, and it’s not just family and friends in the crowd anymore. So that’s really exciting, and we can’t wait to have our home games where it’s just going to be a sea of green.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
McGann has every reason to relish meeting the Italians this Saturday. She scored a hat-trick of tries in last season\u2019s championship game in Parma, a game Ireland won 54-12, and she admitted she was disappointed not to have kicked off the 2026 campaign with a starting role. Beibhinn Parsons and Vicky Elmes Kinlan started on the wings ahead of her and McGann said: \u201cObviously you want to start. But they had a plan for me to come off the bench and be an impact sub, so I took that seriously, and that’s what I wanted to do, and that’s what I focused on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, going into the next week, I’ll just train away and see what happens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (the competition for places,) it’s unbelievable. We’ve incredible wingers at the moment, and that probably shows how good our squad is at the moment, that it’s so competitive in every position.<\/p>\n
\u201cBei and Vicky were unbelievable today, and it’s a credit to them. To be in a squad where you have Bei, Vicky, Amee-Leigh (Costigan), it’s unbelievable. I love to train with them. I feed off them. The competition is really good. It’s really healthy. So it’s really exciting.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Guinness Women\u2019s Six Nations arrives in Galway for the first time as Ireland host Italy at Dexcom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,15551],"class_list":["post-396485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-six-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396485","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=396485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}