{"id":506682,"date":"2026-06-18T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T20:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506682\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T20:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T20:13:09","slug":"ward-open-to-ireland-playing-in-cork-ahead-of-2027-world-cup-play-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506682\/","title":{"rendered":"Ward open to Ireland playing in Cork ahead of 2027 World Cup play-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carla Ward has said she\u2019d welcome Ireland playing in Cork once again for the second leg of their World Cup play-offs later this year.<\/p>\n

The Girls in Green<\/a> found out they\u2019ll face Kazakhstan over two legs in October in the play-off semi-final, before facing the winner of Belgium and Poland in the play-off final. Both offer up their own unique challenges.<\/p>\n

Against Kazakhstan, it will be the travel, with the flight from Dublin to Astana on average taking over 12 hours. However, the Kazakhs are 100th ranked in the World and the lowest-ranked side Ireland could\u2019ve gotten, so they should have enough to see them off.<\/p>\n

\"irelandAbbie Larkin of Republic of Ireland celebrates. Pic: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n

And while they\u2019ve beaten both Belgium and Poland in the last 7 months, they know what to expect from Ireland as much as Ireland knows what to expect from them. With a further 5 months until that potential tie to scout, that could be a very tricky tie.<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll make the second leg even more important, and as a seeded team, Ireland has home advantage, with the question now being, do Ireland play that important game in Cork or Dublin? The crowd in the Rebel County was raucous for the Girls in Green\u2019s win over the Netherlands<\/a>, but the Aviva Stadium is the home of football in this country.<\/p>\n

\u2018You don\u2019t have to ask me twice about Cork,\u2019 Ireland manager Carla Ward said about the dilemma. \u2018I absolutely love it down there, and I think the players do too. It\u2019s not been confirmed where we\u2019ll play.<\/p>\n

\"carlaRepublic of Ireland head coach Carla Ward. Pic: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n

\u2018Of course, we would love to have one in Dublin and one in Cork. I think that would be the ultimate dream, but we\u2019ll have to wait and see and let the powers that be look after that side of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The beauty of it is, I think form will probably go out the window, previous games will go out the window. I think that\u2019ll be a one-off, big play-off final. I think it\u2019ll be a very different game, to maybe what we witnessed in both games at the Aviva. You know me, I\u2019ll always try and get the one-percenters. We\u2019ll certainly use some of that. But yeah, it will be a tough fit, a tough ask, no matter where we play.\u2019<\/p>\n

As it stands, it appears the Kazakhstan fixtures will take place firstly on October 7 away, before the home leg on October 13. If they are successful, Ireland will face either Belgium or Poland in November\/December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carla Ward has said she\u2019d welcome Ireland playing in Cork once again for the second leg of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-506682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506682","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=506682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}