{"id":399624,"date":"2026-04-15T11:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/399624\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T11:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:16:11","slug":"ward-thrilled-to-give-ireland-football-a-boost-following-agony-of-prague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/399624\/","title":{"rendered":"Ward thrilled to give Ireland foot\u00adball a boost fol\u00adlow\u00ading agony of Prague"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carla Ward says she is thrilled her team were able to give Irish foot\u00adball a lift fol\u00adlow\u00ading the gloom of the men\u2019s team not qual\u00adi\u00adfy\u00ading for the World Cup. <\/p>\n

Ire\u00adland delivered argu\u00adably their best per\u00adform\u00adance in the Eng\u00adlish\u00adwo\u00adman\u2019s time in charge as they held on for an impress\u00adive 3-2 win over Poland, ranked three places above them, in Gdansk. <\/p>\n

Emily Murphy opened the scor\u00ading before cap\u00adtain Katie McCabe<\/a> scored an abso\u00adlute screamer.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ireland\u2019s Denise O\u2019Sullivan and Marissa Sheva. Pic: Ryan Byrne\/INPHO<\/p>\n

Marissa Sheva added a third in the second-half and while there were some nervy moments after Ewa Pajor pounced for Poland\u2019s second in the 79th minute and McCabe unchar\u00adac\u00adter\u00adist\u00adic\u00adally blazed a late pen\u00adalty over the bar, Ire\u00adland, driven for\u00adward by a superb Den\u00adise O\u2019Sul\u00adli\u00advan, held on. <\/p>\n

\u2018I am just really, really delighted,\u2019 Ward (below) said after her team picked up their first win of the cam\u00adpaign and delivered some good news after what happened to the men\u2019s team in Prague.<\/p>\n

\u2018Obvi\u00adously, I\u2019m really close to Heimir [Hallgr\u00edmsson]. I spend a lot of time with him and I felt it with him, with the group and it\u2019s tough. But if we can bring a little bit of life to it and give every\u00adone a lift, great. Because we\u2019re all in it together. \u2018After the first two games of the cam\u00adpaign (2-1 defeats by both France and the Neth\u00ader\u00adlands), we knew we were get\u00adting there, we were com\u00adpet\u00ading with two of the very best. But the proof\u2019s in the pud\u00adding and that\u2019s points.<\/p>\n

\"carlaCarla Ward. Pic: Ryan Byrne\/INPHO<\/p>\n

\u2018All week we\u2019ve talked about com\u00adpla\u00adcency, mak\u00ading sure there isn\u2019t that there, tak\u00ading the pos\u00adit\u00adives from the first two games, but con\u00adtinu\u00ading to improve all those areas we need to. And to turn that into three points they deserve an awful lot of credit.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ward admit\u00adted she was sur\u00adprised that Poland sat off Ire\u00adland in the open\u00ading 15 minutes and that gave her team a bit of belief.<\/p>\n

\u2018We almost pre\u00adpared ourselves to weather an early storm, but it didn\u2019t come. And then we star\u00adted to feel that we could nick a bit more momentum, and get a little bit more aggress\u00adive.<\/p>\n

\u2018We got Katie a little bit more front-footed and aggress\u00adive, front two were a little bit more aggress\u00adive, and then it puts us in a pos\u00adi\u00adtion where then you can con\u00adtrol the game.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"Katie McCabe celebrates after she scores her sides 2nd goal. Pic: Ryan Byrne\/INPHO<\/p>\n

And Ward was full of praise for O\u2019Sul\u00adli\u00advan\u2019s<\/a> per\u00adform\u00adance.<\/p>\n

\u2018She was bril\u00adliant, wasn\u2019t she? Abso\u00adlutely world-class tonight. I actu\u00adally told her at the end, I said, that is up there with some of the best 90 minutes I\u2019ve seen from you. She was superb. I could talk about Den\u00adise till the cows come home.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pajor\u2019s late goal did cause some jit\u00adtery moments towards the end but Ward felt her team were always in con\u00adtrol.<\/p>\n

\u2018Look, we never want to con\u00adcede and I will remind the play\u00aders those are moments that we\u2019ll look at. They won\u2019t be the only moments they want to look at, because they want to improve and they want to be bet\u00adter all the time. This group is so hungry to learn. They abso\u00adlutely loved how much we want to try and develop, and how much we want to try and tap into everything.<\/p>\n

\u2018But look, the big thing is three massive points, away from home in a very tough place against a very good team. This group really do deserve an awful lot of credit for deliv\u00ader\u00ading the way they just did.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"Ireland\u2019s Emily Murphy celebrates with team mates after she scores her sides 1st goal of the match. Pic: Ryan Byrne\/INPHO<\/p>\n

Hav\u00ading bagged a third suc\u00adcess\u00adive player of the match award, Emily Murphy sug\u00adges\u00adted that was the best Irish per\u00adform\u00adance she was involved in \u2014 but there was more to come from the team.<\/p>\n

\u2018As we said in the huddle at the end of the game, that was prob\u00adably the best per\u00adform\u00adance that we had and to do it away to Poland required a massive shift,\u2019 said the New\u00adcastle for\u00adward, who scored her second inter\u00adna\u00adtional goal.<\/p>\n

\u2018We knew com\u00ading into this win\u00addow that we need points and we are halfway there, but another big shift is required in the Aviva on Sat\u00adurday. I will just keep work\u00ading hard and doing what I am doing and the whole team will. We fight for each other.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carla Ward says she is thrilled her team were able to give Irish foot\u00adball a lift fol\u00adlow\u00ading the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-399624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399624","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=399624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}