Welcome!
Good afternoon and welcome to the Irish Independent\u2019s live coverage of Ireland\u2019s 2027 Women\u2019s World Cup qualifier against Poland, with kick-off here at Lansdowne Road at 3pm.<\/p>\n
Se\u00e1n O\u2019Connor here and I\u2019ll be keeping you updated across all of the action from Dublin 4 as, after Tuesday\u2019s impressive 3-2 win in Gdansk, Carla Ward\u2019s side target back-to-back wins to all but secure third place which would bring with it a more favourable play-off route later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the Girls in Green, the state of play is clear. After opening the campaign with narrow defeats to France and the Netherlands, Tuesday\u2019s win over Poland was a huge step forward in their ambition of sealing third place, which would also see them retain their place in League A.<\/p>\n
Ireland are guaranteed a play-off regardless of their final place but if they finish bottom, they would face a tougher play-off against a League B side, while third-place would set up a play-off against League C opposition in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Poland arrive in Dublin with a point to prove after suffering their first home loss in 10 games earlier this week. They managed an impressive draw at home to the Netherlands last month, before falling to a 4-1 defeat to France in their second game of the group. Last Tuesday, Poland were ranked five places higher than Ireland but the latest FIFA rankings has the roles reversed, with Ireland now up at 22nd (a joint-high) while the Poles have dropped to 27th.<\/p>\n
More than 18,000 tickets had been sold as of yesterday for Ireland\u2019s sixth time to play at the Aviva – with the team\u2019s record crowd standing at 35,944 against Northern Ireland in 2023 – as Ward\u2019s side target another big victory on the road to Brazil 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kick-off is one hour away and we\u2019ll have team news for you next.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome!Good afternoon and welcome to the Irish Independent\u2019s live coverage of Ireland\u2019s 2027 Women\u2019s World Cup qualifier against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,23411],"class_list":["post-405210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-womens-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405210","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=405210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}