With less than 24 hours to go until they open their Women’s World Cup campaign against hosts Australia, there is not much left for the Irish team to say that hasn’t already been said.
At their final press conference in Stadium Australia, Vera Pauw and Katie McCabe were once again asked about the Colombian game. “We’re Irish, we don’t shy away from physicality, it’s ingrained in us, so yeah, we’re absolutely prepared for Australian physicality tomorrow,” said McCabe.
“We’ve seen that and obviously we’ve looked at games, even the game against France and we know they don’t want to shy away from it either, but we’ll be prepared to obviously match it.”
They’ve done the analytics on Australia, as a team and the individual players, with Pauw outlining the challenge her side faces.
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“We are preparing for a team that has gone to every single [World Cup] with only one exception,” she said. “They have huge experience, they have class players, they have immense pace.
“We know what we are going to face and within that, of course, we are going to try to play our game, but we do know the pressure that we will be under. It’s the first time that we are at this world stage, which is massive. The way we’ve come here is something to be really, really proud of. And we are very realistic in our chances here, but we play every game to win. We start a game to win.”
McCabe believes Ireland can harness the underdog tag to their advantage in Australia, with further group games against Canada and Nigeria to come.
“As a small nation you kind of carry that title [of underdog], I guess. But for us it’s, yeah, we know what we want, we do. We don’t want to just be here to be happy to be here. You know, we want to compete and we want to give Australia, Canada, and Nigeria the hardest possible games and making sure we do that obviously starting tomorrow night.”
Pauw admitted that the promotion campaign for Ireland to “outbelieve” is a motto her players have taken to heart.
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“That word will end up in the dictionary because we outbelieve we can do something special here,” the Dutch coach said. “That is how we ended up here because we outbelieved. We did something that nobody expected.
“But we are realistic. We are very realistic otherwise you cannot succeed, the key thing is that everybody will feel is that we have no fear of failure. We were going to this game, in a way that we think that we can play against Australia and without any fear.”
McCabe backed up her manager and said the team were out to create a legacy for Irish women’s soccer. “Whether it’s the crowd, whether it’s the pressure of the opponent, we’re ready for that and we see if it’s good enough.
“I guess the caption beyond greatness, succeeding levels of expectation, I guess, that’s something we’ve done along the way, by qualifying for our first ever major tournaments and we’ve created history by doing that. For us, fundamentally as a team, we don’t just want to create history, we want to leave a legacy.”
To the country’s great relief, Pauw revealed that Denise O’Sullivan is fit and ready to go after the shin injury she picked up in the aborted ‘not-so-friendly’ against Colombia.
The Cork midfielder went on to do a full training session on Wednesday under the watchful eyes of the media, Fifa volunteers, the Minister of State for Sport Thomas Byrne and Emmie, a young girl from Dublin who won the chance to attend the training on the Late Late Toy Show last year.
Following their training session at Leichardt Oval, the team made their way back to Stadium Australia where on Thursday McCabe will lead the side out for their World Cup debut in front of a crowd of 80,000.
What the captain will say to the team before they go out she will “be keeping that in house”.
“Why we start playing football is for the love of it and the enjoyment we bring playing with each other. Myself and the girls have been on a journey along with the coaching staff, and all our staff really these last couple of years. And yeah, we’ll just be embracing every moment tomorrow, taking it in, of course, having that moment to ourselves and then when the whistle is blown we’ll be ready.”
