Day 3 started with a nice lie in and a run out against Fiji in the midday sun. Much like the Australian game yesterday this is also what the World Cup is about – the chance to play against countries from the other side of the world that have put in tremendous effort and sacrifice to be here. Fiji W35s are very much a developing squad in terms of Touch, but you can see the proud and typically Fijian style of rugby, looking for offloads, not giving an inch in contact and always smiling 🙂 It was a well disciplined first half with good structure and patterns. Attention to detail did falter a bit in the second half but we secured a very solid 15-0 victory. Captain Claire put on a show for her visiting family by scoring 4 tries, Emer also picked up a hat-trick, with Susan, both Niamh’s, Cait, Laura, Gail, Emma and Julie all picking up a try each.
As expected the Welsh game was a tightly contested battle – only 1 try separated us both after 3 matches at the last Euros! I think it being the 6th match in 3 days affected the low scoring, but also the effort from both teams defensively has to be praised. Wales deserved their 3-1 victory, with Niamh H getting our lone score. Even still it’s one that got away and we were left thinking what could have been.
Day 4 brought a complete change of pace and venue as we moved from the quiet surroundings of Riverside to the very busy main Highfields area. The long wait until nearly 5pm for the match didn’t help us and the team never really got going, or played the way we can. We found ourselves 0-2 down with Singapore scoring either side of half time before Michelle finally got us on the score sheet and back into the game. The Red Team injection for our last drive produced the best movement of the game and should have pulled off the great escape, but the equalising score was judged to be touch before ball down in a tight call. Video evidence doesn’t really support the call, but we have nobody but ourselves to blame for not creating more sooner in the game.
This resulted in us finishing in a somewhat disappointing 7th – 8th place play off with Fiji after the pool phase. Sadly quite late on Saturday Fiji withdrew from our match as they only had 5 fit players left and couldn’t patch together enough bodies to take to the field – a very flat and premature ending that left us all feeling pretty empty as were awarded a 0-0 win!
It’s not what we were hoping for, but at the last World Cup Ireland didn’t enter any Women’s teams and there were only 3 official nations in this W35s category. It’s fantastic and well deserved to see the growth – long may it continue. We’ve all learned a lot of valuable lessons and hopefully we’ll come back wiser and stronger next time! It was mainly a well run tournament, always an honour to be out there representing your country and great to meet old friends and make new ones, in what is a tremendously respectful sport. The technical error that ended round 1 matches 5 minutes early should have been avoided, the weather can’t be – but better parking and tent construction could be considered for any future events. There was good spectator turn out at matches and a great atmosphere about the place, but it would have been nice to see more matches streamed – only 8 of the 34 W35s games were recorded, Ireland only appearing in one of them (in contrast 11 of the 18 Men’s Open matches on Day 1 alone were streamed). The final moan is mainly a personal one and that’s simply ABE! There’s so many amazing places in the world so it was a shame to end up on our doorstep and back in familiar surroundings – roll on New Zealand 2028!!
Below are a few great pictures from Howard Goldberg that can be found at the sportphoto.wales web site – well worth checking out!
