Triple Crown champions Wales may currently find themselves in fifth spot in the Women’s Six Nations table, but head coach Jason Lewis is still targeting a top two finish for his side.
A victory over Scotland has been sandwiched between defeats to England and France which means Wales travel to Ashbourne on Friday night (KO 7.30pm) to take on Ireland who are nestled just one place above Wales on the points table.
For the Irish clash, the pack remains the same as the one which lost to France 3-15 at Bridgend two weeks ago but Lewis has tinkered with the backline. Amy Day comes in at halfback for Laura Prosser while Mared Evans and Ceri Redman start at full back and centre respectively.
Non Evans has moved from the No 15 shirt to wing to accommodate her namesake while Naomi Thomas moves from outside centre to inside centre to allow Redman to take her place in midfield.
Clare Flowers drops out of the backline after undergoing shoulder surgery with wing Caryl James moving down to the bench.
Lewis is fully aware the Irish will be pumped up for Friday’s clash as they will be hoping to stop the rot as they have lost their last two encounters against France and England.
“We’ve set ourselves a really tough challenge,” he said. “The bottom line is we have to go to Ireland on a Friday, play under floodlights, on the back of a loss and we have got to get a win.
“But it’s going to be tough, very tough. Ireland always target us as a side to knock over as they see us as a side immediately above them in the pecking order.
“The Six Nations is still wide open. If we beat Ireland and Italy we could still finish second. In our minds it’s everything to play for. We’ve got to go to Ireland confident we can start to see some of our potential come through which we began to see against Scotland.
“We had a bad day at the office against France but we’ve got to move on from that. We can’t dwell on it. We’ve picked the bones out of it, we know what went wrong, we know what we need to do, so it’s onwards and upwards.”
Wales: Mared Evans, Aimee Young, Ceri Redman, Naomi Thomas, Non Evans, Awen Thomas, Amy Day; Catrin Edwards, Rhian Bowden, Jenny Davies, Gemma Hallett, Rachel Taylor, Catrina Nicholas, Jamie Kift, Mellissa Berry (capt).
Replacements: Claire Horgan, Louise Horgan, Claire Donavan, Lisa Newton, Laura Prosser, Kay Rees, Caryl James.
