Talk of record defeat to England is 'insulting' - Dorothy Wall

Ireland flanker Dorothy Wall has hit back against the "insulting" nature of the coverage of their upcoming TikTok Women's Six Nations meeting with England in Cork.

Greg McWilliams' side welcome the defending champions to Musgrave Park on Saturday, with the two teams experiencing vastly different championships this season.

From an Irish point of view, the numbers make for grim reading; Saturday's 24-7 defeat to Italy has left them with their worst start to a championship since 2007, while they've mustered just two tries and 15 points in comparison to the 31 tries and 185 points for the visitors, who are heavy favourites to go on and win a fifth title in a row later this month.

Simon Middleton's England were 69-0 winners when the teams met in Northampton 12 months ago, with suggestions in the UK media that the World Cup finalists could inflict a record defeat on Ireland this week, or even surpass the 89-0 Six Nations record they set against Scotland in 2011.

And Wall was not impressed with suggestions that this weekend's game could be a bad look for the tournament.

"People speculate the whole time," the 22-year-old said.

"There was also someone who said we just shouldn't play the game. That's absolutely ridiculous, why do you think we put on an Irish jersey, why do you think we put in as much work as we do?

"This stuff about a record score, and not playing the game, it's just very insulting to us as players who go out every day and put everything into this Irish jersey. To play a Six Nations, and fair enough the results haven't gone our way, but that's part of sport. You fail and learn and fail again and eventually go get there. All the talk of that sort of stuff does nothing for us.

"What's the point in speculating on that? We