Ireland v Italy: Hosts should have 'high expectations' and target three home wins in Women's Six Nations
Kicking coach Gareth Steenson says Ireland "should have high expectations" as they look to kick-start their Women's Six Nations campaign with victory over Italy in Galway on Saturday (17:40 BST). Ireland opened the tournament with a 33-12 defeat by world champions England at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.But Steenson insists the Irish have no interest in "making up the numbers" as they target home wins over Italy, Wales and Scotland and a statement away victory over France."They should have high expectations, why would they not? They're playing for their country," said Steenson. "We want to go to the next World Cup and be competitors. We don't want to go and make up numbers, we want to be going into Six Nations games and we want to be going and winning games, but we have to understand that to get there we have to keep going on a journey to get to that point."Steenson added: "You have to take every session to grow and get better. We've got three games at home, we want to win the three games at home and then we want to go over to France next week and we want to be knocking and getting into that top four [in the world]."There's a bit of hurt from what happened at the World Cup and we want to make sure we can put a few wrongs right."First-half errors cost Ireland against England as they fell to trailed 21-0 at half-time before an improved second-half showing yielded tries from Anna McGann and captain Erin King. And Steenson is confident Ireland - who finished third last year - will improve as the tournament progresses, starting with Saturday's game at Dexcom Stadium. "As a coaching group, it's something we're challenging them on," added the former Exeter Chiefs fly-half. "I do believe these things will get better. The more we can put them in pressure situations in training should stand them in good stead as we move forward."We would expect to see a better performance this week. But if you look at the how the game panned out, we worked out a way to cause England a bit of damage and played to our strengths."In positive squad news, former co-captain Sam Monaghan and scrum-half Aoibheann Reilly have resumed training after missing the England game.
