![\"erin-king-takes-a-selfie-with-fans-after-the-match\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778223793_86_.jpeg\")
\n Ireland captain Erin King with fans in Galway. Dan Sheridan \/ INPHO<\/p>\n
IRELAND HEAD COACH Scott Bemand says he and his team want to be filling the Aviva Stadium for home games in the coming years, after ticket sales for next weekend\u2019s Women\u2019s Six Nations game against Scotland passed the 26,000 mark.<\/p>\n
With over a week still to go until that clash with the Scots, the attendance in Dublin will smash the existing record of 9,206 for a home Ireland Women game.<\/p>\n
That record was set just last month as Bemand\u2019s beat Italy in Galway\u2019s Dexcom Stadium, but next weekend at the Aviva will take things to a new level in Ireland\u2019s first standalone women\u2019s game at the Dublin venue.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow\u2019s home Six Nations game against Wales in Belfast will involve a considerably smaller crowd, with around 5,000 tickets sold for the game at the Affidea by Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Ulster play at home to the Stormers in the URC on Friday night, which naturally hasn\u2019t helped ticket sales, while plenty of Irish rugby fans clearly targeted the Scotland clash in Dublin as the one to wait for.<\/p>\n
Regardless, Ireland boss Bemand hopes his team can deliver a performance tomorrow in Belfast that makes even more people want to turn up the following weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur home games are and continue to be really important for us,\u201d said Bemand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to keep growing the spectacle, the performance. We want people on board. We want to fill stadiums. Once we can start breaking the back of getting 10,000 people regularly turning up to watch us\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re obviously going to the Aviva. In a short while, we want to be talking about filling the place. So we want to keep people talking. We want to keep people excited about what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bemand and his squad are pleased about the uptake for the Scotland game in Dublin, although the hope is that it\u2019s only another rung on the ladder to something even bigger in the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s class,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a stepped process, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
\n Ireland captain Erin King with fans in Galway. Dan Sheridan \/ INPHO<\/p>\n
Dan Sheridan \/ INPHO \/ INPHO\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the same with England when they were talking about playing standalone games at Twickenham. So we want to get people on board, we want to get people in through the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to get a performance out there that people want to come back and look again, and hopefully we\u2019re not talking about 25,000 or 26,000 for too long, and we can keep growing that number.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the bottom line for Ireland \u2013 winning games and playing well. That\u2019s what gets big crowds through the gates and coming back for more.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s improvement in the last two years has been clear for all to see, but the losses away to England and France in this Six Nations were a disappointment for them.<\/p>\n
Having torn Italy apart in their game in Galway last month, Ireland now plan to show their quality on home soil against Wales and Scotland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe home games are really massive for us,\u201d said Bemand. \u201cCertainly, the away games in this competition, going over to Twickenham and Clermont, were going to be two big Test matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we acquitted ourselves well in those, but you\u2019ve got to win your home games. In terms of where we are and where we want to get to, we\u2019ve got to win these home games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing Wales and Scotland, two massive games, and we want to get our best out there. But from where we are as a group, we want to keep going after our performances, the processes of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done that in training this week. The girls have backed up two unbelievable training days this week on the back of, we had one big day in the fallow week where they kind of parked the France result and got thinking about Wales.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had three big days coming into this Test match. We\u2019re ready for it. And what we\u2019re going to do now is get our best performance out there and let the rugby do the talking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRELAND HEAD COACH Scott Bemand says he and his team want to be filling the Aviva Stadium for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,9036,2447,2057,131385,4381,4599],"class_list":["post-438283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-scotland","tag-scott-bemand","tag-support","tag-ticket-sales","tag-wales","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438283","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=438283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}