Republic of Ireland boss Carla Ward said her team will come back “stronger and better” when the World Cup play-offs roll around in October.
The Girls in Green saw their dreams of topping the group, and thus earning a direct ticket to the tournament, evaporate at the foothills of the Alps on Tuesday night.
Melvine Malard’s brilliant overhead kick just before half-time settled the contest and saw the French seal their ticket to South America. However Ireland gave it a good rattle.
The 72nd-minute dismissal of Thiniba Samoura allowed the visitors to really turn the screw, with Anna Patten and Abbie Larkin both spurning golden chances to get them back into it.
It wasn’t to be, but Ward wasn’t too downbeat after a campaign full of positives. Ireland’s third-placed finish means they’ll be seeded when the play-off draw is made on 18 June.
That – on paper at least – offers a kinder pathway as well as home advantage in the second leg.
“I’m incredibly proud of the group, I really am and so should everybody,” Ward said at Stade des Alpes.
“They’ve been sensational in this campaign. Tonight we’ve come close again against one of the best teams in the world and my God did France turn up tonight, they were brilliant.
“They’re an outstanding team and the way they moved the ball, they’ve got world-class players everywhere.
“Look, if anyone had said we’d be in this position I would have snapped your hand off, but we’re disappointed to have lost the game and that tells you an awful lot about how far we’ve come.
“I think we can compete against anybody and we’ve shown that. But now it’ll be about reflecting, having a look at the campaign. We’ll review it, what’s been good, what needs improvements, and I will find plenty of them because you do. So we’ll come back stronger, better, ready to go in October.”
Ireland will face one of Hungary, Greece, Romania, Belarus, Kosovo, Lithuania, Croatia or Kazakhstan in the play-off semi-finals and will be big favourites to prevail no matter who they draw.
A dejected Katie McCabe leaves the field
The challenge for Ward will be to keep her side focused and sharp, staving off complacency as they enter a period of hibernation before a defining autumn.
“I want to get back straight away, but we’ll go to Zurich next week and see who we play, see what the route for the play-offs is and then we’ll assess that and we’ll get back to work,” she stressed.
“I reflect with real pride in the way that we’re progressing. I just said to the players then, this isn’t the start, it’s not the end. It’s very much a journey, no matter if we had won the game tonight, whether we drew or like it has happened, we’ve been beaten.
“We’ll continue to work, we’ll continue to go in the direction we want to go in. So everyone will pick themselves back up ready for October and go down the other route, which if you’d given us that six months ago, we probably would have taken that.”
It has been an excellent eight months for Ward. Having masterminded an impressive defeat of Belgium in the Nations League promotion/relegation play-off, she has successfully refined a more expansive approach while maintaining the team’s solidity.
Lots done, more to do on the road to Brazil 2027.
“We’ve come up short against one of the best in the world,” the head coach added. “They put teams out of sight and I’m sure when you speak to their manager, they’ll tell you, and you can see from the celebrations at the end, that wasn’t easy tonight. We made it difficult for them.
“We were hoping that they wouldn’t find rhythm, but we did prepare for an onslaught as it was. And I think we managed that in the first 20 minutes, we really did, because we knew they would want to try and pull us out with all their rotations. We didn’t allow them to.
“I said to (the players) this morning, everybody questioned can you compete in League A?
“And now they’re saying, ‘wow, you can really compete against everybody’. I just said to them at the end, to be disappointed to get beat in this position shows a hell of a lot of how far we’ve come. But I always say we’ve got work to do.
“If we put in performances like we have in this campaign, we’re absolutely fine.”