Women's Six Nations: Door not closed on Moloney - Sweeney

Sweeney says Moloney will never be "off the cards"

Scrum coach Rob Sweeney says Ireland are "backing what we have" but insists the door is not closed on Cliodhna Moloney making a return to the squad.

Wasps hooker Moloney was a surprise omission from head coach Greg McWilliams' 38-player squad in March.

Ireland have started the Six Nations with defeats by Wales and France, but Sweeney says the coaching staff are happy to stick with the current team.

"Cliodhna is a smashing player," he said.

"But I think Greg spoke about it at the start of the tournament, he kind of made the call on that."

In November, Moloney likened comments made by Eddy, who left his post as the IRFU's women's rugby director in March, to "slurry spreading" after the Australian insisted the 15-a-side game had not been overlooked in favour of the sevens set-up.

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IRFU chief executive Kevin Potts subsequently insisted her exclusion from the Six Nations squad was not related to her comments.

However, despite Ireland's defeats by Wales and France, Sweeney appeared to play down the prospect of a swift return for Moloney as he singled the 28-year-old's replacement Neve Jones out for praise.

"Neve Jones has been one of our best players over the last two games," added the former Connacht player.

"She's been outstanding, her growth has been exponential since she's gone to Gloucester and come back in. She's really merited being in there."

Sweeney added: "The door is not closed for Cliodhna obviously, she still comes up in conversation but I think if we look at what Neve Jones has done in the last two games, I think she's been outstanding and there's no reason to drop Neve at the moment.

"She [Moloney] will never be off the cards. It's just we are backing what we have at the moment and I've got to double-down and say how well Neve Jones has done."

Ireland aim to secure their first win of the campaign when they host Italy at Musgrave Park on Sunday.

The Irish scrums were an issue in the defeat by France in Toulouse, but Sweeney insists "it will be fixed" as they prepare to welcome the Italians - who also lost their first two games - to Cork.

"We knew ourselves going into it that an away trip to France, from playing them last year, that they were going to be very good," he said.

"But the big thing we've taken from it is that it's a massive learning for our girls. As mad as it is, to be on the backend of a scrum like that, you do only learn and get better from it, so we've picked out a couple of bits.

"You look at Christy [Haney] who made her debut and she was outstanding. Linda [Djougang] played both sides and did very well.

"There's a lot of good stuff there and it is the start of this team's journey. It will be fixed. John Fogarty [Ireland men's scrum coach] is helping me out with it, David Nucifora [IRFU high performance director] was on-site on Saturday helping out, so everyone is pulling together in the right direction with it.

"There's a few bits that we see as key that we're going to work hard on on Thursday and Friday to make right for Sunday. It will be better for Sunday."