In her latest www.rucked.com column, England prop Katy Storie gets all excited about the Six Nations...
I think the last time we played Wales we had something like 42 scrums, it was totally ridiculous. As a prop normally I'd say that was a good thing, but it was really tiring. Wales are always hard to play against and they try to slow down the ball – it's the way they play and they're very good at it. We always try to get quick ball from our backs, so it can get frustrating and it's not a game I look forward to. It's always a very aggressive game too as the England v Wales game is the longest-running international fixture – so there's a lot of history and a lot of animosity between the two sides. I know we can do it though and I believe we will.
The game isn't at Twickenham, and yes it would be nice to play there again, but London Irish is a great ground. We played there in December against the USA, and the A team also took on the Eagles a couple of days before and at both matches there was a great crowd. For the A team match, which was held on a bitterly cold Wednesday evening, around 900 people turned up to watch the game. Around that same number turned up to our game on the Saturday too. Hopefully we can expect more of the same on Saturday, and certainly for our final RBS Six Nations match against Ireland on 15 March we will be expecting a bumper crowd. Not only are the men playing just down the road at Twickenham, but there will be massive St. Patrick Day celebrations going on so I am sure there will be a very vocal crowd in support of us and the Irish too! London Irish RFC are renowned for throwing a good party!
There's a lot of pressure on us this year because we're champions and ranked higher in the world than the other nations. The pressure is on us to perform and we need to be very clinical – we want to play and not allow others to spoil the game. Of the other fixtures, with France there is always fear that they can turn us over as they've done it before. We've got Scotland up in Scotland and, while we caught them sleeping last year and they didn't know what hit them, they'll be different this year because of all the performance staff they've had working with them. Ireland are always improving, and then there's Italy – I'm really keen to see what the Italy set-up is like. I'm not entirely sure where the stadium is in Rome – it's not the main one – but we're going to head into the city to have a tour and we'll all be watching Gladiator the night before so everyone knows what the coliseum is. You can only appreciate it when you see the film and everyone loves the music and the quotes from Gladiator – it's a real rugby thing.
As for our squad, it's not actually changed that much from last year. There's a bit more youth, but that's about it. I can't wait to play this year and we're not worrying about the responsibility of trying to win the Grand Slam – it's more a type of excitement at the prospect of winning three in a row. It's not been done before and we do talk about. It's certainly a goal of ours but our coach Gary Street has said that, yes, we do want to win, but he's going to be rotating players. With two years to go to the World Cup, we need to make sure everyone gets experience on the pitch. Everyone in the squad of 22 is going to be playing a big role.