{"id":126561,"date":"2025-09-08T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/126561\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T00:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T00:01:09","slug":"irelands-monaghan-and-higgins-disappointed-with-black-ferns-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/126561\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Monaghan and Higgins ‘disappointed’ with Black Ferns loss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the lead up to Ireland\u2019s<\/a> 40-nil loss to New Zealand<\/a> there was so much promise for Sam Monaghan<\/a> and her teammates.<\/p>\n

All day green jerseys piled into Sussex and there was a palpable sense of expectation on the final day of 2025 Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> pool action.<\/p>\n

But not long after Ireland\u2019s Call reverberated around Brighton Community Stadium\u2019s concrete bowl, and a promising opening 15 minutes, it was the Black Ferns\u2019 afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"VideoPortia Woodman-Wickliffe receives Women\u2019s Top 50 award<\/p>\n

New Zealand Women\u2019s superstar Portia Woodman-Wickliffe spoke to RugbyPass after receiving the prestigious, inaugural RugbyPass Women\u2019s Top 50 award this week. <\/p>\n

View Top 50<\/a><\/p>\n

\"VideoPortia Woodman-Wickliffe receives Women\u2019s Top 50 award<\/p>\n

New Zealand Women\u2019s superstar Portia Woodman-Wickliffe spoke to RugbyPass after receiving the prestigious, inaugural RugbyPass Women\u2019s Top 50 award this week. <\/p>\n

Under Scott Bemand\u2019s leadership, Ireland<\/a> have more often than not made great strides forward. In 2025 alone the side saw Aoife Wafer<\/a> win the Guinness Women\u2019s Six Nations<\/a> Player of the Championship and a third place finish in the annual competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey played some incredible rugby,\u201d Monaghan said. \u201cWe\u2019ve left this game a bit disappointed and we left a fair bit out there.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our errors they converted into tries and a lot of the pressure we put on them we just couldn\u2019t convert in their 22. Loads to take into next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got such a massive week coming up, we\u2019re in a quarter-final which is really exciting. We\u2019ll dust ourselves off, go again next week and bring it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eve Higgins\u2019<\/a> performance on the south coast more or less typified her team\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

The 2024 Summer Olympian tirelessly carried the ball and made last ditch tackles. On several occasions the 26-year-old even received treatment, although she remained on the field even as Stacey Flood<\/a> and Edel McMahon<\/a> left the pitch early with injury.<\/p>\n

Higgins was also removed from play early when her mouthguard indicated that she required a head injury assessment and subsequently passed.<\/p>\n

It was just the finishing touches that lacked and left the centre frustrated at the final whistle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing to come out and have zero points on the board,\u201d Higgins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re fortunate enough now to be through to a quarter-final next week and we\u2019ve got a few days to assess ourselves and fix things.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Zealand<\/a> put huge line speed on today, with huge physicality, it\u2019s now what we do to learn from that and get ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next week in Exeter, Ireland will take on Pool D table toppers France<\/a>. Their opponents beat South Africa<\/a> 57-10 at Franklin\u2019s Gardens to conclude the group stages and avoided a potential banana skin against an opponent that have impressed many at the World Cup so far.<\/p>\n

It has been eight years since Ireland last tasted victory against France.<\/p>\n

WIth the potential return of Aofie Wafer on the horizon and a week to banish the errors that compounded their efforts in Brighton, a brighter horizon could well be around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the lead up to Ireland\u2019s 40-nil loss to New Zealand there was so much promise for Sam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-126561","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\/126561","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=126561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}