{"id":142958,"date":"2025-09-14T16:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/142958\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T16:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:35:09","slug":"deflated-dannah-obrien-insists-times-are-changing-for-irish-womens-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/142958\/","title":{"rendered":"Deflated Dannah O’Brien insists ‘times are changing’ for Irish women’s rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A heartbroken Dannah O\u2019Brien admitted she felt like she had \u201clet the crowd down\u201d against France<\/a> but is hopeful Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> 2025<\/a> can prove to be a turning point for the game in Ireland.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien kicked a first-half penalty to help Ireland<\/a> build a 13-0 lead in their quarter-final against France at Sandy Park.<\/p>\n

However, that half-time advantage was ultimately not enough as France scored 18 unanswered points in the second period to book their place in a ninth World Cup semi-final.<\/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

Ireland will play a Women\u2019s Six Nations<\/a> game at the Aviva Stadium for the first time next year, and asked if that highlighted the scale of the journey the team has been on in the last two years, O\u2019Brien said: \u201cDefinitely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think times are changing for women\u2019s rugby. To be honest\u2026 losing today, I\u2019ve never felt like I\u2019ve let the crowd down as much as I did today. Letting our green wave down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it just goes to show what momentum we can build as a team and not just as a country and bringing everyone along with us and inspiring the nation as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully we keep that going and I just want to say a huge thanks to everyone who supported us along the way. Sorry we couldn\u2019t get over the line today but we\u2019re really proud of everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland and O\u2019Brien played to the conditions brilliantly in the first half, using the wind at their backs to pin France inside their own 22 for almost the entire half.<\/p>\n

However, they were unable to convert that pressure into more than two tries with Les Bleues putting on an impressive five-minute defensive stand with the clock in the red at the end of the first half, and down to 14 players.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a game of moments and I think you have to take each moment how it comes,\u201d O\u2019Brien added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe [needed to] start capitalising on ours, but I think we did such a hearty effort out there, and we came out and we really put our stamp on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have something really to be proud of there, and the whole country behind us, we can feel it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s hard not to get the win for the nation but hopefully we can come out in the Six Nations fighting again and maybe in another four years it\u2019s a very young team and we get past that quarter-final stage and into the semi-finals where we hope to be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A heartbroken Dannah O\u2019Brien admitted she felt like she had \u201clet the crowd down\u201d against France but is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-142958","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\/142958","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=142958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}