Alison Miller: Evolving attack is next step for Ireland

Former Ireland winger Alison Miller says she's excited to see the "evolution" of Scott Bemand's Ireland team, after an encouraging first outing in the Guinness Women's Six Nations.

While Ireland lost their sixth game in a row in the competition, the 21-point defeat to France on Saturday was closer than had been expected, with an aggressive Ireland defence proving a good match for last year's runners-up.

While Ireland's lineout consistently struggled, they mauled well when they had the chance, while their tacking stats were far improved on 12 months ago.

Hooker Neve Jones led the way with 23 tackles, with Brittany Hogan making 16 and Linda Djougang completing 14, while the team's missed tackle count of 17 was a marked improvement on the corresponding fixture 12 months ago, when they missed 43 tackles for an overall completion rate of just 76%.

"We saw, on Saturday, a really good defensive display," Miller said on RTÉ's Against the Head.

"There was a big hunger for this team to defend. I think they're trying to build the whole gameplan on having a solid defence. If you look at the results last year there were some big scores taken by all the teams against Ireland.

"I think they're enjoying defence, because you have to be able to do that at international level, and we saw some very offensive tackles, and a big comparison to last year when we saw a lot of reaching and a lot of misses.

"France never really looked like cutting us up, they had to really work for their tries, a very impressive defensive display, [defence coach] Declan Danaher has clearly done very good work to get those girls connected."

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