Six Nations: Scotland Women 3-30 Ireland Women

Scotland Women’s captain Susie Brown was proud of her players’ efforts on Saturday against Ireland, but she was left frustrated after yet another defeat for her side.

SCORERS:

Scotland Women: Pen: Ritchie.

Ireland Women: Tries: Miller 2, Fleming, Briggs. Pens: Briggs 2. Cons: Briggs 2.

The Scots went in to the RBS Six Nations match at Lasswade on the back of losses to England and Italy while the Irish were on a high after wins over Wales and England.

However, in the first half you genuinely could not tell who was the team going for the Triple Crown and who was the team struggling.

The Scots tackled like demons in defence and rattled the Irish while they also went close to scoring tries of their own.

At the break the home side trailed just 8-3, but the game turned in the 57th minute when home stand-off Tanya Griffith was yellow carded.

Ireland exploited the advantage well and went on to win 30-3 in the end.

Back-row Brown said: “My overriding feeling is one of frustration right now because we showed that we can compete with a side like Ireland, but after the sin-binning we kind of fell out of the game.

“While pleased with the performance generally we have to look at why we cannot convert our pressure into points and we will be working hard to put things right before the Wales match.”

In the seventh minute Scotland were awarded a penalty in front of the posts and centre Lisa Ritchie slotted it over.

In the 22nd minute Niamh Briggs, the Irish full-back, kicked a penalty and two minutes later the visitors scored a great team try with winger Alison Miller scoring to make it 8-3.

After Griffith was sin-binned Briggs converted the resultant penalty and Ireland used the player advantage to then score a converted try through Miller again.

Further tries came from Siobhan Fleming and Briggs as Ireland finally eased away from the Scots to clinch theTriple Crown.

Scotland Women: S Johnston; A Sergeant, S Dixon, L Ritchie, M Gaffney; T Griffith, L Dalgliesh; H Lockhart, S Quick, T Balmer, L Wheeler, B Parker, J Konkel, S Brown, T Forsberg. Subs used: B Dickens, S McKerlie-Hex, N McLeod, B Millar-Mills, K Shields, S Law, L Neary.

Ireland Women: N Briggs, A Baxter, L Cantwell, J Murphy, A Miller; N Stapleton, L Muldoon; F Coghlan, G Bourke, A Egan, S Spence, ML Reilly, S Fleming, J Neville, C Molloy. Subs used: SL Kennedy, F Hayes, L Day, L Dargan, L Guest, A Davis, G Davitt, N Kavanagh.

Referee: S Rees (WRU).