Win over Italy ‘massive boost’ for Scotland ahead of Ireland clash

Chloe Rollie believes the positivity from last weekend’s win over Italy can help Scotland round off their TikTok Women’s Six Nations campaign on a high note in front of a bumper crowd against Ireland on Saturday.

Bryan Easson’s team ended a run of 12 consecutive defeats in the tournament when they beat the Azzurri 29-21 at Dam Health Stadium to climb to fourth in the table.

A record crowd of more than 4,000 is expected this weekend as the Scots attempt to finish their campaign with back-to-back home wins by seeing off Ireland, who have lost all four of their games so far.

“The tournament’s been positive so far,” said 27-year-old full-back Rollie. “We had tough games against England and France and a tough loss against Wales in a game we were looking to win but I feel like all the hard work we’ve put in over the last five or six weeks came to a head against Italy last weekend.

“It was nice to take positives from that to push into this week. It’s given us a massive boost. We feel like we deserved that win as a team for all the hard work we’ve put in.

“Every week when we’ve had a loss we’ve come back the following week and connected really well as a squad so it was massive for us to get that win to push us forward.

“The objective against Ireland is to keep winning. We want to take the game to Ireland, perform really well and get a win to keep the streak going and set a new trend of back-to-back wins.”

Ticket sales for Saturday’s match in Edinburgh have already exceeded the previous record crowd of 3,988 for last year’s match against England, and Rollie is relishing the prospect of a big turnout.

“I’m so excited,” she said. “I love playing in front of a big crowd. When they bring their loudest voices, it really affects us in a positive way. It pushes us on, we feed off it. We want to make everyone proud.”

Easson has made one change to Scotland’s starting XV, with Emma Orr taking the place of Lisa Thomson at outside centre.