For former Irish international player Hannah Tyrrell, defence will be key to getting ahead of the Italian side in this weekends Six Nations.
"Those players have the opportunity to get on the pitch and right a couple of wrongs," said Tyrrell in episode three of the Her Sport' Six Nations Show.
"We have a chance. I don't want to write this team off with some really good players in there. It's just that you know, we have a lot of inexperienced players who maybe are not used to competing in that international level and that takes time, Tyrrell told Her Sport, " There's a lot of learnings...the games are played a lot quicker".
This Italian team will prove another tough opponent according to Tyrrell as they have "been improving in recent years" and got a surprising close result against the French, losing out to the reigning runners up by just 10 points.
"We saw them put up a really good performance against the French and then they did crumble against England...Ireland will be hoping to put them under a lot of pressure so that they can't play the rugby they want to".
"A big thing that Italy like to do is that they like to run it out of out of their defence a lot of times which is high risk, and if we can put them under pressure, we can force turnovers and get the ball and get in really good attacking opportunities for us" said Tyrrell.
"So our defence has to be really good. Our first off tackles have to be really good. We missed 45 tackles against France, you know, and they punished us for that...we need to flip the tables, make our defence really good and force Italy into mistakes".
This weekend is round three of the TikTok Six Nations and will see Ireland take on Italy away to Parma, England take on Wales in Cardiff Arms Park and France take on Scotland at home.
Catch the full preview in Episode Three of the Her Sport Six Nations show brought to you in association with Opel. #DriveOn
