Tanya Waters was reminiscing with Virgin Media’s Ann-Marie Keegan about playing for Ireland in their first ever rugby international back in 1993 in Edinburgh. “We only met as a team the night before in a guest house – I hadn’t actually ever met some of the girls.” Now, some of ye follow teams that look like they’ve never met before either – like, say, the Dubs on Sunday – but that rugby side was quite literally chucked together for its international debut. “They’ve come a long way,” Joe Molloy chuckled in the build-up to the women’s first stand-alone game at the Aviva, a crowd of just over 31,000 in their seats awaiting the Six Nations game against Scotland. One of the panellists, Jenny Murphy, recalled playing there for Ireland in 2014 when their game against Italy followed the lads’ encounter with the same nation, and close to the entire contents of the stadium streaming out before the women kicked off. Fiona Hayes was forgiving, noting that it was Brian O’Driscoll’s last home game, so “I think a lot of people were probably in mourning”.Fiona, Jenny and their fellow panellist Eimear Considine have had to do no end of mourning down the years themselves about the state of the women’s game in Ireland, regularly required to conduct postmortems into on- and off-the-field woes. Sunday, then, came as a relief and a monumental pleasure. This was a happy day. The piece with Tanya was very lovely, concluding, as it did, with her meeting up with the current Irish captain Erin King in the Aviva dressingrooms, before they both headed out on to the pitch. Cut from the same cloth, but world’s apart in their rugby experiences. All week, when King and other members of the current side spoke about the significance of this game, and the number of tickets sold for it, they gave a nod to the women who came before them, like Tanya, who, as they put it, paved the way. And were entirely unheralded while doing it. That consciousness and appreciation of their unsung predecessors is always striking about our sportswomen, our footballers regularly doffing their caps to those who put up with no end of, well, excrement before embarrassing the FAI into giving them a little bit of respect. Ireland's Aoife Wafer celebrates after the Six Nations match against Scotland in the Aviva. Photograph: INPHO/Ben Brady And the rugby crew, of course, had to do the same with the IRFU. Denise O’Sullivan’s presence in the crowd for Sunday’s game was a sweet demonstration of the solidarity between them all. “I’m getting emotional now thinking about how far they’ve come,” said Fiona, although you’d imagine she’d welcome the day when we could stop talking about crowd sizes and media coverage and venues and the like. And, instead, focus on the actual games and whether they’re good, bad, or middling. [ Erin King hails ‘special’ day as Ireland beat Scotland in front of record crowdOpens in new window ]Would Scotland produce up a good, bad, or middling performance in Dublin? “Irish coach Scott Bemand said Scotland look well organised and will take some breaking down,” said Joe. “That seemed like a lie to me.”A respectful lie, of course, but, yes, a fib all the same. After all, Scotland had conceded 84, 41 and 69 points in their last three Six Nations outings, so, well. “If you concede 194 points in your last three games, it’s difficult to put that argument,” said Jenny. And with just the four-ish minutes on the clock, Scotland were a try down, leaving Dave McIntyre and Grace Davitt predicting an avalanche of scores. Which came. Half-time? 47-0. Joe threw a glance at the territory stats and professed to having never seen anything like them. Ninety-two per cent to Ireland. “We could get double digits here,” said Jenny.Among the highlights was, as Fiona described it, that “swan dive” from Aoife Wafer when she went over for one of her tries. “If I’d done a dive like that,” said Fiona, “I’d have needed a crane to lift me up.” [ Ireland crown historic occasion with blistering first-half display as Scotland put to the swordOpens in new window ]Scotland stemmed the avalanche, though, in the second half, which Ireland won by a mere 7-5, but job done, the crowd given plenty to cheer about. “FEAR THE WAFER” read the banner in the crowd as said woman collected yet another player of the match award. “That’s what dreams are made of,” she said of the occasion. Yup, they’ve come a long way.