McWilliams: We need to 'play ball' with Sevens squad

New Ireland head coach Greg McWilliams admits that he will likely be without a number of the Sevens players towards the end of the TikTok Six Nations due to a clash with the World Series.

The team begins a new chapter following the failure to qualify for the World Cup and McWilliams today named Nichola Fryday as the captain of a new-look squad that contains nine uncapped players.

Their first game is against Wales on Saturday at the RDS [4.45pm live on RTÉ].

There are trips to France and England in the itinerary too but the final home game, in Belfast against Scotland clashes with the Canadian leg of the Seven series.

Ireland had to do without contracted players Beibhinn Parsons, Stacey Flood, Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe and Eve Higgins for the final game of last year, the 15-12 win over Japan that was the final game of former captain Ciara Griffin's Irish career.

In 2017 three of the 15s were pulled from a Six Nations match to play a Sevens event in Las Vegas

Giving his first press conference today since being appointed as Adam Griggs’ successor, McWilliams said he had been assured that he would have a full deck to pick from before acknowledging that some players will likely be missing.

"Yeah, yeah, I was given those assurances but I’m being true to myself and this is a World Cup Sevens year," he told RTÉ Sport.

"The Sevens players are incredibly professional and they’ve been coached brilliantly and they are going to be important to us but we need to build depth within the squad. .

"We’ve talked as a group about this. We allowed the players to have a say in how selection is carried out, we are all very comfortable with that.

"We have the Sevens team, we think it’s important that as many as possible go to Langford and represent the