IRELAND AREN\u2019T PLAYING for a title, but this Sunday\u2019s clash with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium promises to be a special occasion.<\/p>\n
The final-round Women\u2019s Six Nations sees Ireland host their first-ever standalone game at the Dublin venue, with more than 26,000 tickets sold by late last week.<\/p>\n
That will make it the biggest home crowd ever for an Ireland Women\u2019s game, smashing the record of 9,206 that was set just last month against Italy at Galway\u2019s Dexcom Stadium.<\/p>\n
Ireland have played at the Aviva before, when they took on Italy after the men\u2019s game there in 2014, but the reality is that most punters who had watched the men\u2019s match left after that.<\/p>\n
This weekend, the huge crowd will all be there to see the women\u2019s team play.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we can really look forward to it,\u201d said Ireland captain Erin King after last weekend\u2019s 33-12 win over Wales in Belfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about enjoying our rugby and enjoying the build-up to that game. I think we really deserve it. We\u2019ve been growing in this tournament in the last few years. I think this is where the game is and where we should be playing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, we\u2019ll sell loads of tickets. We\u2019ve said openly that we do want to win them three home games, and we haven\u2019t done that in a while. Performance first for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we go and get that win, it will make it all the sweeter. Our heads turn to Scotland now, and putting in a big performance against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only will Ireland be eager to finish this Six Nations on a big high with their best performance yet, but they\u2019ll also be motivated to put on a show with so many people attending.<\/p>\n
This team have played in front of some big crowds, including a record Women\u2019s Six Nations crowd of 77,120 at Twickenham last month, but there should be lots of emotion involved on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Ireland boss Scott Bemand said his side won\u2019t shy away from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to feed off the energy, haven\u2019t you?\u201d said Bemand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s our first opportunity to play a standalone game there. The experiences that we\u2019ve had in this competition, and even in the World Cup, where you look at Brighton and how many green shirts there were in the crowd, it\u2019s something that I think the group feed off now.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a couple of years ago it was a bit daunting, that many people watching and what have you, but now I just see it as being the 16th person on the pitch with you.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd hopefully, like I say, we get our performance right and we work hard back at the HPC, which we always do, and we get the best performance out there and then we get people talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRELAND AREN\u2019T PLAYING for a title, but this Sunday\u2019s clash with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium promises to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[123980,144356,61,60,43,2447,4599],"class_list":["post-442957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-erin-king","tag-hosts","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-scott-bemand","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442957","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=442957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}