Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Ireland head coach Scott Bemand.Morgan Treacy/INPHO earning his stripes How days as a Leicester Tiger helped shape Ireland coach Scott Bemand The former scrum-half has leaned on his own playing experiences in changing how his Ireland squad train. 6.31am, 25 Jul 2025 Share options SCOTT BEMAND WAS 25 when he joined Leicester Tigers, the fruition of a lifelong ambition. What he saw and experienced as part of that famous Tigers team shapes his outlook to this day. Talk to members of his Ireland women’s squad, and they say the biggest change since Bemand came in as head coach in the summer of 2023 has been in how they train. It can all be traced back to Bemand’s time as a Tiger. The Bemands farmed for a living in Hereford, about an hour’s drive either side of Worcester and Gloucester in England’s West Midlands. A strong sporting house, the young Scott Bemand threw his hand at whatever was on offer. “I was a cricketer, I was a rugby player, I swam, tennis, anything. If there’s a ball involved, give me it.” Yet Leicester Tigers were the big draw, that support reinforced by the regular presence of Tigers backrower Dean Richards around the family farm. “At that point he was an England number eight, and he used to come shooting on the farm. So the first signature I got was Dean Richards. Every time he came to the house, ‘Would you sign this for us?’ We had a wide kitchen door and he filled it, and I was like ‘Wow, how massive are these people!’” Years later, at the age of 18, Bemand played against Leicester for a junior club team in a development game. He played well enough to catch the eye, and acknowledges how that outing worked in his favour down the line when the scrum-half’s time with Harlequins came to an end. After three years and 30 appearances for Quins, Bemand left London with a Challenge Cup medal in his pocket and joined a Tigers side who had won four Premiership titles and two European Cups in the previous seven years. Yet some things aren’t meant to be – Bemand leaving Quins before Richards joined the club and landing in Leicester after his old hero had left. Not that there was any shortage of big figures knocking around Welford Road. “Walking into a room and you look left and right and you meet Martin Johnson, Martin Corry, the list goes on,” he says, with Leo Cullen and Graham Rowntree also part of that famed Leicester squad. “It was an unbelievable environment to step into. Very, very parochial, but we loved that. Advertisement Bemand playing for Leicester.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo “The thing that struck me with Johnno, and Johhno’s an absolute hero of mine, but as a leader he knew when to say ‘we’re doing this’, and he knew when to say ‘what do you think we need to do?’ So one of the first starts I had there, he asked ‘which way do you want to play?’ And I was like, Martin Johnson’s asking me which way I want to play! I said ‘I think we should go this way and this is why,’ and we ended up doing that. As an empowerment piece, as a young scrum-half I was blown away. That fella knew how to lead.” The lessons Bemand learned in those Leicester days are now being implemented on the IRFU’s training pitches. “You would have heard me talk about training identity quite a bit, that’s probably where I first experienced it, where people from the outside would look in and go ‘wow!’ without really knowing what went on, but they would talk about the training identity of Leicester. So it had gravity to it, people respected it even without knowing it, and that translated to the pitch in terms of how they were able to put their version of whatever their culture was out onto a pitch. That’s something that sat pretty deeply with me and it’s something I’ve continued into my coaching.” The Ireland players started their pre-World Cup training camp in early June and describe training as being more competitive than ever, while training for game-specific situations has also helped the group manage their way through different scenarios on the pitch. Bemand points to last year’s milestone defeat of New Zealand at WXV1 as an example. “It’s not always just about hard (work), it’s not, but your identity is a strong anchor and in the toughest games, say the New Zealand game, for me that game’s full of training identity, and the reason being we lost the lead with a few minutes to go and you saw people step up and what got us into their half gave us the position, gave us the ball back, gave us an opportunity. That’s training identity. “And then you think the game’s won, but we’ve got to take a scrum on the halfway line because the clock is different, and that’s training, that’s snap of the fingers and they’re back in. They’re going from I think we’ve won it, to hold on, there’s a scrum, calm, and that’s training identity. So I’d say I learned a lot from the Leicester days. It’s good grounding.” It’s all been building towards this summer’s World Cup, which kicks off next month. Ireland open their pool campaign against Japan in Northampton on 24 August, before games against Spain and New Zealand. Before that, they’ll play two warm-up games against Scotland in Cork (2 August) and Canada in Belfast (9 August). Bemand joined the Ireland set-up in 2023.James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO Across his two years in the job Bemand has tweaked the way Ireland play. Given so many of the squad might not have come to rugby until their mid-teens, he sees the multi-sport background those players have as a significant skill advantage. It’s something he first became aware of while working as attack coach with the England women’s team. “The transfer between sports is high and we’ve got some advantages over here in Ireland in terms of the Gaelic games, whether it be hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, the transferable skills from that are significant. “So whether you play soccer, which is a 360 game, a lot of fly-halves have got footballing background, some of our girls, the ones that are particularly strong aerially, have got a Gaelic football background. I think the first time I played against Ireland was at The Stoop, and we decided to go with the shorter kicking game. So, we dare you to catch these. They caught everything! “And so the importance now of footballers in a backline… Wingers used to be: you’re fast and you’re a try-scorer. Now they’re fielding kicks, looking at the opposition’s game, shifting to it and putting kicks in. So they’re fielding kicks, putting kicks in, it’s three fullbacks now, isn’t it? “So the game is evolving in terms of the skill sets required and the bit to tap into for us is that cool richness of sports that a lot of people in Ireland play coming through, like Gaelic football as an example, it does transfer a lot. It transfers to lineouts, high hand skills, throwing, all that sort of stuff. I would have said we noticed it and it’s definitely something we try to make an active decision really to try tap into it.” Ireland head into the World Cup without key players in Dorothy Wall and Erin King, while Aoife Wafer is in a race to be fit following a procedure on a knee injury. As damaging as those losses may be to a squad that remains a work in progress, there remains optimism heading into the tournament, with Bemand acknowledging a couple of good results would quickly get the hype train up and running again. “A green shirt should be hard to get into,” he continues. “It shouldn’t be, ‘oops, I find myself as an Ireland player.’ You should have to earn it, and then there’s the understanding of what you do when you get there. “World Cups are always bigger beasts in terms of the noise, so competitions like this come with their own pressure. The World Cup will feel different to a Six Nations, so we have to understand what our key bits to go after are and almost dial down as much of the other noise as you possibly can. “But ultimately, what are we here for? We’re here to get the best performances out there, we’re here to perform, and we want to come out with an experience that the players go, ‘that was unbelievable’. We want them to have a good experience doing this, so if we can get those two bits right, hopefully the noise on the outside can stay on the outside.” Ciarán Kennedy Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “How days as a Leicester Tiger helped shape Ireland coach Scott Bemand”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “How days as a Leicester Tiger helped shape Ireland coach Scott Bemand”. Your Feedback Your Email (optional) Report a Comment Please select the reason for reporting this comment. Please give full details of the problem with the comment... This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy before taking part. Leave a Comment Submit a report Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines. Damaging the good reputation of someone, slander, or libel. 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