defeat to France<\/a> ended a three-match winning streak in the qualifiers, sending them into the next Wednesday\u2019s draw for a convoluted play-off system.<\/p>\n Success in finishing third ahead of Poland confers seeded status on Ireland, ensuring they cannot meet superpowers like England or Sweden in either the semi-finals or finals of the series.<\/p>\n
Ireland will be drawn against a lower ranked team in the semis, due to take place in October, and the form book indicates a nation in the calibre of Scotland or Wales, who they’ve met successively in the last two play-off finals, await in the shootout in late November.<\/p>\n
As with the semi-final, Ireland will be at home for the second leg on December 5.<\/p>\n
Lansdowne Road could stage one or both of those legs but given last Friday\u2019s 3-2 victory over fancied Netherlands made it a perfect record of three wins from three at P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh, the Liverpool playmaker can see the merits in the FAI taking the decider south to the home of Cork GAA.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, of course,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan said with a giggle about Cork\u2019s attractiveness. \u201cThree wins in three in Cork and last Friday was absolutely fantastic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the fans stuck behind us for 90 minutes. They were dancing and loud as ever at the end of the game. It’s a great atmosphere down there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope we can continue playing there, whether we do or not is another thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The playmaker returned from missing the Dutch game through suspension to harness midfield in Grenoble. As the squad\u2019s most experienced campaigner, with over 100 caps, she was self-critical of her own display, while lamenting a litany of golden opportunities squandered to earn a draw or even the victory to usurp leaders France for that direct ticket to South America.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrance were on a different level and it was probably a game too far for us,\u201d she surmised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe showed character and fight to keep pushing in the last 15-20 minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf one of those chances went in, the game could have flipped and we would have ended up winning but no-one would have seen us being in the position of being able to qualify automatically for the World Cup.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a whirlwind year for O\u2019Sullivan, between leaving America behind after a decade to join the Reds.<\/p>\n
The football pauses for the summer but she\u2019s got another big day out looming with her wedding to fianc\u00e9 James, before attention turns to pre-season and the play-offs with Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think it’s going to be a free hit,\u201d she said of the semi-final against one of Romania, Greece, Kosovo, Hungary, Croatia, Belarus, Kazakhstan or Lithuania.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be a very different game to what we\u2019ve been recently used to, probably playing against a lower block, which at times as a team we’ve struggled.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be up to 21st place in the Fifa rankings is absolutely amazing but we want to keep striving to get higher and higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur time under Carla has been fantastic. I think the biggest thing under Carla is she just instils this belief and confidence in the team. We\u2019ve gotten better with every game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denise O\u2019Sullivan admits she hopes Ireland\u2019s women return to her native Cork in December for the World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,18998],"class_list":["post-492498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-wnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492498","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=492498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}