“My nephew is Beneath-13, enjoying county [GAA] and so they have a diet seminar. That is Beneath-13s. That is senior provincial rugby.”

There was a component of tongue-in-cheek, maybe, however the former Eire and Ulster centre was lethal severe when detailing causes for – and potential options to – the disaster which has now seen the workforce go a outstanding 11 years with no victory.

Saturday’s crushing 43-0 defeat at house by Leinster ended one other dismal Interpro Sequence for Ulster through which they conceded 102 factors of their three outings, with the entire 19 factors they scored coming in a 25-19 loss at house to Connacht.

Some hope for a greater future for the ladies’s sport was offered simply final week when it was introduced that the UK authorities’s Levelling Up Fund had allotted a £5.1m grant for 20 Ulster rugby golf equipment, aimed toward growing girls’s participation within the sport and at enhancing the usual of feminine altering rooms.

Tips on how to flip across the workforce’s fortunes is a subject which has attracted important commentary. BBC Sport NI seems to be at 5 areas highlighted by Davitt, who performed in three World Cups for Eire, as integral to fixing the disaster that has gripped Ulster girls’s rugby.

Get to work within the colleges

Requested on Sportsound Additional Time how she would spend £5m to enhance the ladies’s sport, Davitt instantly turned to work that she believes must be accomplished all through colleges.

“I’d go into colleges. Should you had a prime boys’ rugby college and also you tried to usher in soccer or gaelic, they’d say ‘no, we do not need the competitors’,” she mentioned.

“You see that with colleges. They don’t want their hockey gamers taken away to be enjoying rugby. The mindset is ladies may get damage enjoying rugby.

“I’d have improvement officers getting into there and supporting the faculties and educating them in how ladies play rugby, and [explaining] that you just’re not taking from the elite athletes that they’ve.

“As a substitute, you are growing your entrance 5, your hookers, the smaller gamers that possibly do not feel assured in hockey and discovering a distinct segment for them.”

Enhance the membership scene

Davitt additionally harassed the significance of enhancing the Ulster membership construction, one thing that she believes wants considerably enhanced because it finally must be serving to present gamers for the senior Ulster provincial workforce.

“Malone have dropped out of the All-Eire League, that means Cooke at the moment are the one All-Eire League workforce in Ulster which is admittedly disappointing,” she defined.

“Six of these beginning Ulster gamers play in Leinster. That is one other essential level, how can we proceed to develop our Ulster workforce and our Ulster golf equipment when our provincial gamers are enjoying in one other province? How can we get the likes of Vicky Irwin, Neve Jones and the women enjoying in Dublin to come back again to Ulster?

“That has to come back all the way down to that membership construction, getting high-level coaches inside these groups. You give them the help constructions and the committees.

“One of many largest issues of the IRFU evaluate of membership rugby and girls’s rugby was that feminine gamers did not really feel valued. In case you are someplace the place you do not really feel valued, you aren’t going to need to keep. You are put to the again pitches.

“I really feel some golf equipment simply tick a field to get a girls’s workforce that they will play AIL however they really do not help it. It is getting that funding from Ulster. We see such a disparity between the totally different provinces of what that appears like.”

Present extra help for the Ulster workforce behind the scenes

That is the place the purpose Davitt made about her 13-year-old nephew attending diet seminars is related, in that she feels there’s not sufficient help and sources offered to Ulster gamers and coaches to assist them enhance areas akin to preparation and coaching strategies.

She is adamant that the gamers and coaches try as laborious as they will, however that they want extra assist.

“I simply query the quantity of help they’re getting behind the scenes. Not simply inside these three matches nevertheless it comes all the way down to their preparation, power and conditioning, health, diet and abilities. All that must be developed over quite a lot of years,” she remarked.

“You take a look at Leinster and so they have a 10-management workforce. You take a look at Munster and the quantity of administration there. You take a look at the disparity at Ulster and it is fairly slim. It’s essential to begin constructing that up.

“I feel Leinster subsequent yr are going to have a full-time S&C coach simply managing the ladies’s workforce. That isn’t even coming from the IRFU. That is coming from Leinster backing their girls’s rugby and I feel we have to begin seeing that inside Ulster.”

Make enjoying for Ulster extra aspirational

An 11-year run with no win has apparent impacts on squad morale and confidence, that goes with out saying. For Davitt, although, work must be accomplished to create an atmosphere the place positivity can develop.

“It is actually laborious in your psychological well being to maintain pushing by and hoping ‘this yr’,” she mentioned.

“We see it with groups getting that monkey off their again and getting that win. We see the likes of Munster and, regardless that their backs are in opposition to the wall in opposition to Leinster, they get the win.

“We have to create an atmosphere, whether or not it is by abilities periods or weekly golf equipment being developed, and S&C health exams. The extra first rate gamers we offer into that community, then the extra competitors and the extra requirements are pushed, then everybody improves.

“On the minute, we do not have that. Individuals aren’t eager to be there.”

Do not brush issues underneath the carpet

It is a smaller level, however Davitt additionally harassed the significance of not shying away from the issues and, specifically, of the media shining a lightweight on the problems as this can assist with the turnaround.

“Put it up, be embarrassed after which go, ‘what’s it we have to do to repair it?'” she mentioned.

“If we brush underneath the carpet the place our failings are, we’ll by no means repair them. Whereas, if we put it within the highlight then we will take a look at what do we have to do.”