{"id":17619,"date":"2025-09-12T23:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T23:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/17619\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T23:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T23:14:10","slug":"anna-caplice-room-for-optimism-as-ireland-plot-their-french-resistance-in-exeter-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/17619\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Caplice: Room for optimism as Ireland plot their French resistance in Exeter showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">The gap between Ireland and France is closing and victory on Sunday would represent major progress\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Aoife Wafer, who makes a timely return to the Ireland back-row, warms up before the Pool C clash with New Zealand. Photo: Harry Murphy\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/dfafdc73-a105-4fb5-bb90-fa708208dfdc.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Aoife Wafer, who makes a timely return to the Ireland back-row, warms up before the Pool C clash with New Zealand. Photo: Harry Murphy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ding, ding \u2013 time for knockouts!<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Now, however, the gloves are off as well as all bets \u2013 because this is when it really matters. Sandy Park in Exeter will play host to Ireland tomorrow for the first time in the tournament as they come to blows with familiar foes France in their Rugby World Cup quarter-final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gap between Ireland and France is closing and victory on Sunday would represent major progress Aoife Wafer,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,1255],"class_list":["post-17619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rugby-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}