{"id":836622,"date":"2026-07-31T23:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/836622\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T23:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:15:15","slug":"here-is-what-to-expect-when-australia-and-irelands-aflw-sides-go-head-to-head-in-historic-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/836622\/","title":{"rendered":"Here is what to expect when Australia and Ireland’s AFLW sides go head-to-head in historic clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, when the AFL reached out to the Irish players in the AFLW to gauge their interest in a representative game, it was a resounding yes please.<\/p>\n

“Everyone was screaming yes, being like, ‘Let’s do it,’ we wanted this for so long,” GWS star EIlish O’Dowd told ABC Sport.<\/p>\n

“We’re so delighted that it’s been put in place \u2026 It’s hard to tell how it’s going to be.”<\/p>\n

The inaugural clash between Australia and Ireland was officially announced in May, with plans for it organised quickly.<\/p>\n

The players were offered a Gaelic ball or Sherrin to play with, with the Irish contingent opting for the latter and playing under Australian Rules.<\/p>\n

Irish fans of AFLW<\/a><\/p>\n

These Irish families get up at all hours of the night to watch AFLW and host viewing parties\u00a0with 30-plus people for big games.<\/p>\n

Irish captain Orla O’Dwyer joked that if they had chosen the sphere ball used in Ireland, the Australian girls would just get “hammered”.<\/p>\n

“(But) having the top Irish and Aussie players come together and play, I suppose that’s why we’re here, we’re here to play AFLW, that’s why we got drafted, that’s why we came,” O’Dwyer said.<\/p>\n

“You might have Irish fans go to this game to support Ireland, and they might leave being AFLW fans for the season, and that’s huge as well for the growth of our game.”<\/p>\n

Irish players are known to be fast, and at times, chaotic. There is more running with constant play in Gaelic football.<\/p>\n

\"Vikki<\/p>\n

Vikki Wall of Ireland is tackled by Ash Riddell of Australia during yesterday’s captain’s run.\u00a0 (Getty: James Wiltshire\/AFL Photos)<\/p>\n

Given the short turnaround time to get the marquee game going, including players going into camp just days ago with not even a main training afforded, the styles of play expected are the chaos of the Irish versus the composure of AFLW under North Melbourne’s Darren Crocker.<\/p>\n

The Irish coach, also Sydney’s new head coach, Colin O’Riordan, joked at the pre-match press conference he did not want to “give away all the secrets that we don’t have”.<\/p>\n

“You just have to adapt and overcome. That’s the mentality probably. (And) speaking from an Irish person, that’s a lot of our mentality as Irish people is adapt and overcome,” O’Riordan said.<\/p>\n

“We haven’t had a main training session; we’ll do a captain’s run today, but at the same time, does that really matter? Probably not. It just forces us to come together quicker.”<\/p>\n

Crocker said his Australian side had the chance to come together and speak about their identity for the clash.<\/p>\n

He gestured to Australian captain Jasmine Garner, also the captain under him at the Kangaroos. “If you look at the person sitting next to me, just so skilful, great decision maker, really composed, really calm,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think we’ve got a really well-balanced team in regards to that. Colin’s mentioned the word chaos \u2026 I feel like it could be a little bit of composure and control against chaos.<\/p>\n

“You know, that sounded quite like a Get Smart episode!”<\/p>\n

\"Monique<\/p>\n

Fans turned out to opening training for pictures and signatures from the AFLW players. (Getty: James Wiltshire\/AFL Photos)<\/p>\n

He added that it would be a mistake to underestimate what this game means for both sides.<\/p>\n

“It is a great honour to be the first to play a historic AFLW international game against Ireland. It’s fantastic and a real privilege for us. I hope the Irish aren’t underestimating how patriotic the Australians are as well,” he said.<\/p>\n

Fans are keen to see particular match-ups, especially between players from the same team, such as O’Dwyer and her Brisbane teammate and Australian representative Sophie Conway on the wing.<\/p>\n

They’ll see a lot of players rotating through the game.<\/p>\n

The game being on the eve of the upcoming season, just one week before the season opener at Docklands Stadium between Carlton and St Kilda, means there are some concerns about workload and conditioning.<\/p>\n

To manage these physical demands, both teams will use an extended nine-player interchange bench (four more than in standard AFLW matches).<\/p>\n

“There are (some players on managed minutes), but that’s the beauty of having nine players on the interchange. We can give this experience to all 25 players, knowing that a few of them are being load managed. \u2026 It allows those players to experience this,” Crocker said.<\/p>\n

\"Erika<\/p>\n

There are 46 current Irish players across the AFLW competition. (Getty: James Wiltshire\/AFL Photos)<\/p>\n

There are 46 Irish players across the competition. A lot of big-name stars will feature in today’s clash against Australia, such as Sarah Rowe, Vikki Wall, \u00c1ine McDonagh, Niamh McLaughlin, Erika O’Shea, Dayna Finn and Aishling Moloney, while some lesser-known names also got the call-up to fill out the squad.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Australia had almost 500 players to pick from, meaning Crocker’s side could pull from a much larger pool of All Australians, premiership players and best and fairests, with each selection known across the competition as a star player.<\/p>\n

For this reason, and playing under Australian Rules, O’Dwyer said she is fine with the Irish not going in as favourites.<\/p>\n

“Us Irish, we love being an underdog, it’s something we thrive off of,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, when the AFL reached out to the Irish players in the AFLW to gauge their interest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,25912,408697,408700,408699,64,63,55,639,193843,135432,408698,52766,85],"class_list":["post-836622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-aflw","tag-aflw-australia-v-ireland","tag-aflw-australian-side","tag-aflw-irish","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-colin-oriordan","tag-darren-crocker","tag-international-rules-aflw","tag-jasmine-garner","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836622","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=836622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}