Ireland women: Past and present players reject director Eddy's remarks on support for women's game

Anthony Eddy rejected the idea that the women's 15-a-side game in Ireland had been neglected

Past and present Ireland internationals have publicly rebuked the suggestion by IRFU women's rugby director Anthony Eddy that the 15-a-side game had not been overlooked in the country in recent years.

The governing body is currently holding a review after Ireland failed to qualify for next year's World Cup.

Eddy, who oversees both sevens and XVs women's programs, said both had received "a lot" of resources in recent years and refuted the suggestion that the sevens set-up has been prioritised.

"I don't think either programme has been favoured," he said.

"Because of our small playing numbers and small talent pool, we have to share resources across both programmes. People who think one programme is being favoured over another, I would clearly say they're wrong."

This has been met with anger by players, with hooker Cliodhna Moloney - currently in the Ireland camp preparing for Friday's Test against USA - likening the comments to "slurry spreading".

Former captain Claire Molloy, who retired from international duty after Ireland's loss to Scotland ended their World Cup hopes, also criticised what she described as "truly disheartening and disappointing" remarks.

Ireland's fortunes have been trending downwards for several years. Having won a Grand Slam in 2013, reached the World Cup semi-finals a year later before winning the Six Nations again in 2015, in recent years they have fallen down the pecking order in the northern hemisphere and are well behind England and France.

Currently only sevens players are contracted to the IRFU with some of those also representing the 15-a-side team, but no female players in Ireland are professionally contracted to exclusively play 15-a-side.

"We'll look at other opportunities to contract players," Eddy said earlier this week.

"There are players that are still in our programme who are on development pathways, whether it's sevens or XVs. Some of those players will be front and centre in both forms of the game and will be utilised by [incoming head coach] Greg Williams over the coming years as well."

Nichola Fryday said she "can't really comment" on team-mate Cliodhna Moloney's criticism of the IRFU director of women's rugby Anthony Eddy

'That's Cliodhna's comment' - Murphy-Crowe

Asked about Moloney's comments in particular, team-mates Amee-Leigh Murphy and Nichola Fryday said on Wednesday that the hooker had been speaking in a personal capacity.

"I'll support Cliodhna. She's my team-mate. I support all my team-mates but that's Cliodhna's comment," said Murphy at an Ireland squad news conference.

"For me personally, throughout these next three days I'm solely focused on the game (against USA)."

Fryday added: "I can't really comment on what Cliodhna has said or hasn't said.

"For us as a group, as I've said before, we're a very tightknit group but we all have our individual thoughts on things.

"We're entitled to put across what we're feeling and what we think about things. That's the way life should be. We should be afraid of saying anything.

"(But) Our focus has been the USA. That's what we've been working towards over the last two weeks. External things we can't control, what's said in the media and what isn't said."

Following Ireland's shock failure to qualify for the World Cup, the IRFU set up an independent review into what went wrong and lock Fryday said she would "put my trust" in that process.

"There's no one thing that led to us not qualifying for the World Cup," added Fryday.

"We'll feed into the independent review and that the other issues and factors that kind of led to us not qualifying will come through that."