{"id":79561,"date":"2025-08-19T09:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79561\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:25:07","slug":"womens-rugby-world-cup-japan-opener-a-huge-opportunity-for-ireland-amee-leigh-costigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79561\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Rugby World Cup: Japan opener a ‘huge opportunity’ for Ireland – Amee Leigh Costigan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wing Amee Leigh Costigan says Ireland will be out to begin their Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign on “the right foot” against Japan on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Scott Bemand’s side will kick off Pool C in what will be their first World Cup game in eight years after missing out on the tournament in New Zealand in 2022. <\/p>\n

Ireland will also face Spain and New Zealand with the meeting against the world champions, who they beat in November during WXV1, figuring to be key. <\/p>\n

Costigan, however, says all focus is on Japan.<\/p>\n

“I see it as a huge opportunity for us,” said Costigan.<\/p>\n

“At the moment, all our eyes are set on Japan. It’s the first game and we really want to go in there and put our best performance out.<\/p>\n

“You want to start off on the right foot and I think that’s what’s important to us now.”<\/p>\n

Ireland lost their final warm-up against Canada in Belfast<\/a> but the 30-year-old Costigan, who was an Olympian with the sevens side in Paris last year, believes the game against the side ranked number two in the world was good preparation.<\/p>\n

While the hosts started slowly, and were 33-7 behind at half-time, they were much improved after the turn in the 47-26 reverse.<\/p>\n

“We put it up to them for a lot of that game and put them under pressure at times, which is really good to see,” said Costigan.<\/p>\n

“We’ll be striving for that 80-minute performance against Japan. It’ll be something that we will really hone in on, how we start off the game.<\/p>\n

“It’s really important, you know, to not be putting ourselves under that much pressure.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wing Amee Leigh Costigan says Ireland will be out to begin their Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-79561","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\/79561","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=79561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}