Top three spot Ireland's priority in women's 6 Nations - Hayes excited by growing player pool

Saturday's Energia All-Ireland League women's final shows that Ireland's pool of players is growing deeper and deeper, according to Fiona Hayes.

Railway Union defended their AIL title last weekend with a 24-18 win against Blackrock in the final in Donnybrook.

It was the first year of the new AIL format for the women's game, which saw the top four teams in the regular season split off into their own round-robin format, which eventually provided last weekend's final.

The decision to revamp the leagues meant that the top club sides in the country would be playing each other consistently in the latter stages of the campaign, which leads up to this month's TikTok Six Nations.

New Ireland head coach Greg McWilliams is expected to name his training squad for the championship in the coming days, and Hayes says the squad could largely be chosen from home-based players.

"It was probably one of the best games I've seen in a long time," Hayes said on this week's RTÉ Rugby podcast.

"It was super rugby, really well executed, things were done at a high speed. The breakdowns were two, three, four seconds max. I think Railway came out firing in the first 20 minutes, and it wasn't until the second half we saw Blackrock really get themselves back into the game. If it went on for another 10 minutes Blackrock were really coming into it.

"There are a lot of girls vying for an Irish jersey, a chance for them to perform on a big stage and a lot of players put their hand up and said, 'hey, Greg [McWilliams], have a look at me...'

"The pool is just getting bigger and bigger. There were some girls that might not have been seen as good enough in Griggs's [former head coach Adam Griggs] eyes, and they put their hands up.

"They had a camp already, and none of