{"id":121023,"date":"2025-09-05T15:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121023\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:49:10","slug":"womens-rugby-world-cup-ireland-coach-scott-bemand-feels-new-zealand-game-is-too-soon-for-aoife-wafer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121023\/","title":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Rugby World Cup: Ireland coach Scott Bemand feels New Zealand game is too soon for Aoife Wafer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Women&#8217;s Rugby World Cup &#8211; Pool C: Ireland v New Zealand<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Venue: Brighton &amp; Hove Albion Stadium Date: Sunday, 7 September Kick-off: 14:45 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Coverage: Live on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 14:30, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra from 14:30 and BBC Radio Ulster and Foyle from 14:00; also live with text commentary on the BBC Sport website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ireland head coach Scott Bemand says he is &#8220;confident&#8221; Aoife Wafer will be ready for a World Cup quarter-final after resisting the urge to include her for Sunday&#8217;s final Pool C game against New Zealand in Brighton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The back row is yet to feature in the competition because of pre-tournament knee surgery and although she was considered for Sunday&#8217;s game against the defending champions, the Irish camp has erred on the side of caution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bemand confirmed there was a temptation to introduce the Wexford woman for the meeting with the Black Ferns, but with either France or South Africa to come next week, having the Women&#8217;s Six Nations player of the tournament ready for then takes priority.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;All the way through there has been a bit of a plan around Aoife, from the very beginning to her joining up with the group a couple of days after we arrived, and everything is tracking and trending,&#8221; Bemand said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Aoife is back in training, she&#8217;s doing well, and she&#8217;s desperate to be involved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We considered picking her this week, but we&#8217;ve made a decision as her best opportunity and the team&#8217;s best opportunity, is to go hard in training again next week and we&#8217;ll see where that stands us for the following week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m really confident and if you look in her eyes you can see she is really confident as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Rugby World Cup &#8211; Pool C: Ireland v New Zealand Venue: Brighton &amp; Hove Albion Stadium Date:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-121023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}