Having had a big influence on Ireland’s 57-20 win over Italy, Aoife Wafer wants to do likewise when they renew their rivalry with France during the middle round of the Guinness Women’s Six Nations.

It is destination Clermont-Ferrand this week for Scott Bemand’s charges, who opened their win account for 2026 in style with a nine-try salvo against Italy in sunny Galway. France come into the game on the back of a 38-7 victory away to Wales.

Ireland ran the French close on two occasions last year, firstly in the Six Nations opener in Belfast – Wafer crossed the whitewash twice that day in an eventual 27-15 defeat – before building a 13-point half-time lead in September’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final, only for les Bleues to bounce back to win by five points.

The Wexford woman has reserved some of her best performances for this fixture, also scoring a try during the 2024 Six Nations game in Le Mans. She starred on her World Cup debut at the quarter-final stage, but came home with a broken collarbone and knee ligament injury, along with the lasting pain of the result.

She is thankful that the controversy surrounding France back rower Axelle Berthoumieu’s bite on her is ‘in the past’. Saturday night’s rematch in Clermont now offers a hugely-motivated Ireland the chance to gain some revenge and boost their hopes of a top two finish.

“That quarter-final hurt, for me personally, it still hurts. But that’s not the be-all and end-all of why we want to win that game as well,” admitted Wafer.

“We’ve spoken a lot about breaking into that (Six Nations) top two and beating tier 1 nations. This group lacks no belief. We believe that we will go over to France and we’ll win.

“So we just have to control what we control. Our training weeks are tough at the minute and everyone’s exhausted come Wednesday when we finish up.

“Erin (King) has spoken about it all week. We spoke about it as a group all week in terms of we can’t just keep talking, we have to actually do it.

“And I think that was a big thing going into this week (against Italy) as well – we can’t just sit back and keep talking about doing X, Y, and Z, we have to go out and action it. And we did today, and I’m sure we will again next weekend.”

France will certainly be mindful of curbing the threat posed by the 2025 Player of the Championship, who recaptured some of her best form against the Italians. She is one of two Ireland players, alongside three-try winger Béibhinn Parsons, in the running for the round 2 MVP award.

Ahead of the big showdown with François Ratier’s charges, Wafer is already in the tournament’s top 20 for ball carries, running metres, successful tackles, dominant tackles, breakdown steals, and defensive ruck arrivals.

While delighted to get back to winning ways, especially in Ireland’s first ever Six Nations outing at Dexcom Stadium, the strong-carrying number 8 wants the squad to be firing on all cylinders for the French test, and that means backing up and improving on what they produced against Italy.

“I think as a squad, we spoke about going out and dominating the Italians in a lot of areas, and I think we did that for large parts of the game. There’s still bits to go after.

“We have kind of internal competitions of maul tries and pick-and-goes versus letting the backs score out wide. As a forward pack, we really stood up and that set-piece, again, bits fixed, but we’re just gelling as a team. It was a really fun game to play.

“I think this group is constantly evolving. I think if you sit still too long, you get taken over by other teams and we don’t plan on ever letting that happen,

“So it’s about growing as a squad. We have shown that we’ve grown even just the week that’s gone with that English game. But we can’t sit still. We’ve got to keep going and keep motoring on to rip into France.”

From the pack’s point of view, the Ireland coaches will have been quietly pleased with a return of seven scrums won and one scrum penalty each. Although there were three lineouts lost out of 14 throws, the visitors lost double that amount with the returning Sam Monaghan claiming two steals.

The girls in green were almost unblemished at ruck time, losing just one out of 112 during the match, with two-thirds of their rucks in the 0-3 seconds range. Their maul was a big weapon, directly for Wafer’s own 14th-minute score, and they made upwards of 42 metres with their driving play.

The Ballygarrett native, coming towards the end of her first season with Harlequins in the PWR, was determined to have a big influence with her ball carrying against Italy. She regularly dented the defence and made incisions during a dominant first half display from Ireland.

After Ireland’s low share of possssion against England, particularly during the opening 40 minutes, left her struggling to make a physical imprint in attack in round 1, she acknowledged: “It’s something that I worked on during the week.

“Myself, ‘Scays’ (James Scaysbrook) and ‘Steeno’ (Gareth Steenson) had worked quite hard on it during the week, and thankfully it came through today.

“Playing over in England, they know me quite well now at the minute. So, it’s obviously going to be a tough game to get into, especially when we don’t have a lot of possession or there wasn’t a lot of carries all over the park.

“Defensively, my game was quite strong (against England), and it was just that attack where I’m usually known for which was quite hard to get into.”

Just like Ireland, France have three home games in this year’s Six Nations and are holding them at three different venues. They kicked off their campaign with a 40-7 victory over Italy in Grenoble, and will host defending champions England in Bordeaux on ‘Super Saturday’ next month.

For this week’s showdown with Ireland, they are sure to have a noisy and passionate crowd behind them at Stade Marcel Michelin, the home of ASM Clermont Auvergne. It will be their first time playing at the stadium in Clermont-Ferrand since losing an autumn international to England in 2019.

14 members of Bemand’s current squad played in the 38-17 defeat to France in Le Mans two years ago, while eleven of them were part of the matchday 23 for 2022’s 40-5 loss in Toulouse. Eve Higgins, Aoibheann Reilly, Linda Djougang, Neve Jones, Dorothy Wall, and Brittany Hogan started both games.

“Look, there’s no denying that the French crowd is built different. They’re loud, they’ve brass bands probably in every corner. They’re crazy. It’s a completely different atmosphere than what you get in any other game.

“And fortunately enough, I played in that Le Mans game two years ago. I was at the Toulouse game four years ago, and it’s just different

“But they’ll all want to be playing the brass band, playing trumpets and whatnot, and we’ll just be wanting to quieten it. So when the trumpets stop playing, and we start getting our game on, that’s when we know we’re doing a good job,” added Wafer.

Irish Rugby

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