Scott Bemand: Ireland have to learn to 'tolerate higher levels of pressure'

Ireland Women head coach Scott Bemand admits expectations are higher as he faces into his second season in charge.

The Englishman took over in summer 2023 after Ireland had finished bottom of the pile in the Six Nations under then head coach Greg McWilliams.

They claimed the WXV3 title, with wins over Colombia, Kazakhstan and Spain last October, and two victories over Scotland and Wales was enough to finish third in the Six Nations last spring.

With that came the elevation to WXV1, which will see Ireland, ranked ninth in the world, take on New Zealand, Canada and USA in three weeks' time.

"I doesn’t get any easier," Bemand told RTÉ Sport’s Michael Corcoran after naming his side for Saturday's warm-up clash against Australia in Belfast (2.30pm).

"WXV3 was a something of a starting point for us, probably at a level of opposition we were perhaps above what we played against.

"We said that was the competition we were in so we’ll go and win it. It allowed us to build our performance.

"Come the Six Nations, against a higher level of opposition, we took a step forward and it wasn’t all perfect.

"Now we go to tier one and... whatever game we put out there is going to have to tolerate higher levels of pressure.

"As a stepped approach, we are tracking in the right direction towards it.

"We’re not naive enough to think it will all be perfect but certainly from how we’ve come in we are further ahead.

"I think we are going to accelerate performance quite quickly.

"What does that mean in terms of results, becuase that’s the big question with elite competitions.

"We want to be in these competitions, we want to be able to win games.

"We’ve got to be able to fire shots because if we don’t we’re not going to be able to win games.

"We’d love to come back