{"id":436318,"date":"2026-05-07T05:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/436318\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T05:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:10:10","slug":"we-want-to-crack-that-top-four-in-the-world-insists-ireland-forward-coach-alan-oconnor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/436318\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We want to crack that top four in the world,\u2019 insists Ireland forward coach Alan O\u2019Connor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ireland women's team forwards coach Alan O'Connor: &quot;I\u2019m looking to build on what\u2019s already there in terms of the foundation that they\u2019ve put in the past while.&quot; Photo: Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/67e6fbfc-6206-407c-b7f0-6ac9b942979c.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)\">Ireland women&#8217;s team forwards coach Alan O&#8217;Connor: &#8220;I\u2019m looking to build on what\u2019s already there in terms of the foundation that they\u2019ve put in the past while.&#8221; Photo: 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)\">Sometimes it\u2019s not about what you know, it\u2019s about who you know \u2013 which Ireland forwards coach Alan O\u2019Connor learned at the start of 2026.<\/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)\">After retiring from rugby at the end of last season, O\u2019Connor, who made 212 appearances for Ulster, began coaching at a school in Ballymena before he was called to the principal\u2019s office for some good news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland women&#8217;s team forwards coach Alan O&#8217;Connor: &#8220;I\u2019m looking to build on what\u2019s already there in terms of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,19086,60,43],"class_list":["post-436318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-international-rugby","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436318","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=436318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}