As Published on www.rte.ie/sport Tuesday, 24 August 2010 21:45
Ireland coach Phillip Doyle has described his team’s performance against Women’s Rugby World Cup Pool B rivals USA as ‘outstanding’.
Tries from Joy Neville (2), Niamh Briggs and Tania Rosser, helped Ireland to a 22-12 victory over their closest rivals in this phase.
Doyle told rwcwomens.com: ‘Ireland today were outstanding from the kick off really. Literately in the first two minutes we were on America’s line and we just stuck with it.
‘We stuck to our tactics in the first half and then using the wind in the second half, absolutely outstanding, couldn’t have asked for anything better from one to 22.’
Ireland were beaten 27-0 by England, who continued their strong start to the tournament with a drubbing of Kazakhstan, in their first game and Doyle said his team’s reaction to that defeat was key to their performance.
‘Well we did a lot of talking, we did a lot of soul searching you know. We knew we put in a performance against England, we knew we could go toe to toe with the best in the world and we just had to back ourselves with that performance and to be honest it told you know and we knew we could play rugby against America and we certainly did.’
Neville marked her 50th cap with a brace of tries but was keen to emphasise the team display.
She said: ‘I’m very happy with that but overall I’m so happy with the performance the team put in.
‘It wasn’t about my 50th cap today it was putting in the effort, today was going to be the hardest game of the tournament and just happy to say we came through.
‘We are in a good position now, we’ve a lot to work on still and just looking forward to improving upon a lot of the set pieces and attacking options.’
Ireland face Kazakhstan on Saturday and a high-scoring victory will give them a chance of securing a place in the top four seeds and a place in the semi-final of the 12 team competition.