Women’s World Cup

Ireland’s women head to France to play in this year’s World Cup. They will face New Zealand, USA and Kazakhstan. This year will see Philip Doyle end his 16 year association with the Ireland Women’s team after the tournament. Can Ireland build on the 2013 Six Nations win and a decent 2014 campaign which saw them finish in 3^rd place behind England and France. 

Ireland will look to target all three games and will be aiming to win all three.  They will know all about their opponents. New Zealand are the defending champions and will be looking to win the World Cup on French soil.

From an Irish point of view, they are a vastly experienced squad and will look to draw on that experience throughout the three games in the pool. Can they create history and go further than before and even win the competition. They were only narrowly beaten by France and England this year in the Six Nations. They have had three tough training weekend’s and are in Spain to complete their preparations this weekend.

They seem really motivated to succeed at this year’s competition. Having spoken to a number of people over the past few days there seems to be great support around for the team and also having spoken to members of the team this past week, there seems to be a real confidence that they could go on to achieve something really special.

Also with the announcement by the IRFU that Philip Doyle will step down from his position as head coach, which should prove to be an extra motivation for the team to give him the perfect send off. He along with his team will not want to exit at the pool phase.

Here’s hoping that Fiona Coughlan and her troops can give Coach Philip Doyle the perfect send off and also do themselves justice and keep creating history as they have done over the last two years. A historic Grand Slam in 2013 and then a first appearance in the Aviva Stadium in March 2014 where the marked the appearance with a win over Italy.

They open there campaign against the USA on August 1^st and then face both New Zealand and Kazakhstan on August 5^th and 9^th respectively. All the games will be covered by TG4 and Sky Sports. So people have no reason to miss this campaign. Get behind this team. They deserve your support.

By

Cian Mc Gibney.

05/07/2014.