{"id":48839,"date":"2025-08-06T22:02:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T22:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48839\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T22:02:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T22:02:25","slug":"wealth-of-gaa-skills-in-team-will-stand-ireland-in-good-stead-at-womens-rugby-world-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48839\/","title":{"rendered":"Wealth of GAA skills in team will stand Ireland in good stead at women\u2019s Rugby World Cup \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gareth Steenson, assistant coach of the Ireland<\/a> women\u2019s rugby team, has praised the range of GAA<\/a> skills among members of the World Cup squad as they prepare for Saturday\u2019s final tournament warm-up against world number two side Canada in Belfast<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Steenson, who won two Premiership titles and a Champions Cup<\/a> during a 12-year stint with the Exeter Chiefs, said the handling and kicking of those with a GAA background has been a huge boon to the side.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve noticed massively since I\u2019ve come back, having been away in England for so many years,\u201d said the Armagh-born former outhalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe GAA players, the skill level right across the board, the high-ball skills, all those elements. It\u2019s fantastic to have that in the locker and a lot of the girls actually have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland outhalf Dannah O\u2019Brien is expected to face a physical Canadian side, who played a kicking game last year when the sides met in the WXV1 tournament, with Canada winning 21-8.<\/p>\n

Irish players were shown two yellow cards in the match, a discipline issue they will not wish to repeat.<\/p>\n

\"IrelandIreland assistant coach Gareth Steenson notes a marked improvement in the team over the last year. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls have come a long way since that game,\u201d said Steenson. \u201cI\u2019ve been here a year and working with the girls and the evolvement of how they\u2019ve performed . . . ultimately when we went across into that competition, kicking was a big part of what our DNA was. We\u2019ve been developing that the last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut from Dannah\u2019s point of view, it probably gets highlighted a little bit more because she\u2019s obviously a player in the position that she\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it\u2019s about developing and getting her understanding of when it\u2019s best to use it, how to use it and when it becomes a little bit more of where we\u2019re actually looking and kicking at spaces and parts of the field, all that sort of thing. So, I\u2019ve noticed since being here that her understanding has developed massively.\u201d<\/p>\n

England are the top-ranked team in the world with Canada second, New Zealand third, France fourth and Ireland in fifth place.<\/p>\n

Although he knows what strengths Canada will bring to the newly monikered Affidea Stadium at noon on Saturday, Steenson hopes it will be a different, more polished Irish team that lines out for the final warm-up match before meeting Japan in Franklin\u2019s Gardens on August 24th for the first pool match of the World Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, Canada are going to bring a lot of threats across the board, whether it be the kicking game, whether it be their physicality and everything they can bring,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to look to use that potential to have that in the back-burner, but we also have a few other tricks up the sleeve when required.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gareth Steenson, assistant coach of the Ireland women\u2019s rugby team, has praised the range of GAA skills among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,41549,760,15131,85],"class_list":["post-48839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ireland-womens-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48839","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=48839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}