{"id":7533,"date":"2026-04-20T05:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7533\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:14:08","slug":"ireland-looking-for-revenge-against-france-in-six-nations-says-erin-king-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7533\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland looking for revenge against France in Six Nations, says Erin King \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

No defeat in recent times hurt this Irish team<\/a> more than the 18-13 World Cup quarter-final loss to a misfiring French team in Exeter\u2019s Sandy Park. Les Bleus were there for the beating. That was the semi-final, even one as daunting as facing England in Twickenham, which got away.<\/p>\n

The Women\u2019s Six Nations<\/a> has also been one of the most frustratingly layered competitions in world sport for the last half dozen seasons. England have won the last six titles in a row, with France runners-up each time. Ireland have been third on four occasions in this time, including the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

Berating France away for the first time in 13 attempts and ending a run of nine losses in a row is this team\u2019s breakthrough target, all the more so after that heartbreaking World Cup quarter-final defeat.<\/p>\n

Most played that day but others like new captain Erin King, were in the stands and she readily admits the memory of that clash is a motivator for this coming week. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, to be honest, I think we\u2019d be lying if we said it wasn\u2019t a bit of a revenge game,\u201d King admitted after Ireland\u2019s emphatic 57-20 win over Italy at the Dexcom Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just that little bit more eager because of that. I suppose we showed in that game what we\u2019re capable of and that we are able to compete with the top four in the world and break into that top two of Six Nations. It would be great to do it and put our talk into action.\u201d<\/p>\n

King had to sit out the World Cup after a serious knee injury, and it was a brave call by Scott Bemand to make the all-action, 22-year-old backrower the team\u2019s captain. She\u2019s also gone 80 minutes back-to-back and has no issues about doing so again in the Stade Marel Michelin next Saturday (kick-off 9.10pm local time\/8.10pm Irish).<\/p>\n

\u201cI was playing in the Celtic Challenge and I got to build up my minutes through that. I played a few back-to-back 80 minutes, so I can\u2019t complain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked really hard in rehab and I suppose it is paying off now. My body feels great and I\u2019m just raring to go, getting stuck into training. We\u2019ll regroup Monday and get stuck into it; fix the little learnings that we had out there. I think the squad is really excited to go for next Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bemand\u2019s other selections were vindicated too, with Robyn O\u2019Connor scoring a try on debut on a day when the Ireland Under-21s also beat their Italian counterparts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call her a pocket rocket,\u201d said Bemand. \u201cShe reminds me a bit of Jack Nowell, whereby she\u2019s got footwork, evasion, she\u2019s got a lovely fend. Bang! She\u2019s a slightly different winger to what a lot of wingers are, just out and out gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beibhinn Parsons also scored an exceptional hat-trick on her homecoming and admitted it had been a more emotional day than she had anticipated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely like a dream come true, but I think some of them were left on a plate for me. So it was just a great day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe third try, I don\u2019t know how many sets of hands it went through and showed the interlinking between our backs and our forwards, so it\u2019s nice to see training transfer on to the match.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No defeat in recent times hurt this Irish team more than the 18-13 World Cup quarter-final loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6151,6149,5,6148,6150,6147],"class_list":{"0":"post-7533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-beibhinn-parsons","9":"tag-erin-king","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-ireland-womens-rugby","12":"tag-scott-bemand","13":"tag-women-s-six-nations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}