A FEW DAYS AFTER slaying the big whale of world rugby in the Black Ferns, the Ireland women’s rugby team took some time out to go whale and orca watching on the North Pacific Ocean.

“Not every day you get to see that,” admits winger Amee Leigh Murphy Crowe, before getting into the whys and wherefores of beating the Black Ferns on a 29-27 scoreline in the WXV 1 tournament.

“We’ve had a few days to reflect on it but what a great performance we put out there on Sunday against such a great opposition. We knew it was going to be difficult but we stuck to our game plan and knuckled down and got the win,” she said.

“Huge credit to our forwards, they did a lot of work for us to put us in the right place, and then to be able to play the game in the right parts of the field was something we thought we did well.”

The team are riding high with confidence under coach Scott Bemand, but are keen not to take Saturday’s opponents Canada for granted. They are coming off the back of a 46-24 win over France and have jumped up to second place in the world rankings.

They meet in Vancouver with kick off at 11.45pm Irish time.

“Going in there we all believed that we could do something special and put out the performance that we wanted. I think our actions showed that,” added Murphy Crowe about the last day out, before switching focus.

“But now we move onto the next job now. We got the recovery in, we had a day off and we have all eyes on Canada now and what we want to bring to that game.

“And I think if we go into it again, believing that we can put out the performance we want to put out, that’s really important for us. Sticking to what we know and what we want to do well.”