Senior coach John McKee says Ireland can't go chasing tries in Saturday's TikTok Women's Six Nations finale against Scotland in Edinburgh.
Ireland need to beat Scotland and score four tries along the way to realistically stand a chance of avoiding the wooden spoon, having only crossed for two tries so far in the tournament.
As well as the matter of pride, Ireland will be eager to avoid sixth place in order to keep alive their chances of getting into Tier 2 of the WXV competition later this year. As things stand, a bottom place finish would see Ireland drop into Tier 3, while fifth place would see them take on Spain in a playoff.
"It is very important, we'd certainly much rather be in Tier 2 than Tier 3," McKee said.
However, despite the sense of urgency around when Ireland's attack will finally come alive, McKee says they need to keep their composure and build their score accordingly.
"Where we are today what we got to do is make sure we bring a winning performance.
"First and foremost we got to win the game and then maybe look at bonus point, or whatever, to climb up the ladder. But we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves and think about how many points we’ve got to score or how many tries we’ve got to score. First and foremost, let’s win the game. Put ourselves in a winning position and then we at the back end of the game we can really, really go after it.
"We've already alluded to that we haven’t been scoring a lot of tries. We certainly can’t think we’re going to play Barbarians rugby and score a whole pile of tries. We’ve got to really try to squeeze the opposition, control field position and build the pressure. That’s how we’re going to bring a winning performance."
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John Mackee