Sadia Kabeya's Six Nations column: Performance over points
Speaking from Six Nations camp in Pennyhill Park, England back row Sadia Kabeya discusses the Red Roses’ dominant win in Cardiff and looks ahead to their match-up with Ireland.
Win in Wales
It was amazing to play at the Principality in front of a record crowd. To walk out into the stadium with the lights, the music, the fire - and then the huge crowd– was just a whole different vibe. Obviously, we’ve had the same at Allianz Stadium before but being the away team in a huge venue like that was really cool.
I had my mum and aunt there to watch. I saw them on the bus journey in, - they were lined up outside on the street, between the Welsh fans giving us intimidating looks - and I managed to catch them after the game. I love seeing family there, but ideally as we’re walking in - once I’m in the stadium, I need to get in the zone! I try to close my eyes during the anthem, to make sure I don’t catch anyone’s eye.
Wales definitely brought their A game. They came out of the traps firing and put loads of pressure on us, and we took 10-15 minutes to get into the groove of things. But we need those games where we get put under pressure and have to get out of sticky situations, and I think we did that very well in the second half.
We were pleased to come into the half 19 points up, but agreed in the team talk that we needed to keep the pressure on. We strive to put in the best performances in that we can and want to be known as a team that’s very ruthless.
Camp
Mitch is huge on us bonding off the pitch and that really does translate to our bond on it. During fallow week, we had a karaoke night. I said I was going to sing a song, but I ended up just dancing! It wasn’t compulsory, but I have a dance that I do, and that was my contribution.
I’m rooming with Emma Sing at the moment. I’ve been with her for about three years now, so we’re locked in. If either one of us asked for anyone else, I think we’d fall out. We’re very different, but I think we understand each other’s differences. We’ve got that kind of relationship where you just understand each other.
Looking ahead
We’re not letting the fact we’ve won our last two games affect our preparation ahead of Ireland - we take each game as a clean slate. However, we do want to keep building pressure on other teams, so we want a bigger result, a better performance.
We played Ireland last year and had a huge result, beating them 88-10, but we know they had two good games in the WXV and a really successful tournament overall. It’s performance over points for us – if we can improve on how we played last year but not score as many points, we’d still be happy with that.
In terms of personal improvement for this Six Nations, I’d like to get myself in a bit more free space, being an edge forward. I’m more than comfortable tucking the shoulder and getting involved with the dirty work, but I want to be able to link up with the backs and the wingers, and hopefully have some breaks down the edges. I just need to get myself in the right position to do that.
