Ireland’s role in England’s summer of sport remains to be determined. You get the sense they’re exactly where they want to be, on the periphery. For now.
English coverage of the upcoming World Cup leaves one dominant impression: expectation. The Lionesses have already won the Euros. Now, on home soil, it’s time for the Red Roses to erase the pain of their final defeat to New Zealand three years ago.
Ireland’s 2017 World Cup misery - what can be learned?
Over 40,000 punters are expected in Sunderland for England’s opener on Friday. Double that number have bought tickets for the final in Twickenham. Organisers talk of “empowering change” and “breaking down barriers.” With those attendance figures, fair enough.
Amid this lofty local ambition, Ireland find themselves just outside Northampton. Their hotel does 90 per cent of its annual business when the British Grand Prix is on at nearby Silverstone. This is the wrong time of year to bump into Carlos Sainz, supposedly a regular guest.
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Country walks, golf, and day trips to the National Guide Dog Centre have dominated players’ downtime. Even their opening venue, the 15,000-seater Franklin’s Gardens, marks a significant change of pace from the pre-tournament fervour awaiting the English.
Ireland are all too familiar with the risk of lofty expectations placed on a host nation. Their last World Cup appearance, 2017, started with semi-final ambitions. An eighth-place finish failed to live up to the hype. More importantly, it meant Ireland still had to work to reach the next edition. Infamously, they failed.
That time out the players suffer from bad preparation. A pair of in-house uncapped games against Japan were the sole offering. They didn’t even get training kits. This time around, capped and ticketed games against Scotland and Canada have been given to a group which has been professional since 2022 – there are still those with day jobs. Investment in the top tier of the sport has improved, and with it Ireland’s results.
Ticket sales suggest the English public are firmly on the World Cup bandwagon. How Irish fans engage with their team remains to be seen, but Franklin’s Gardens is expected to be full. Despite their undoubted threat, the nature of the early opposition – Japan and Spain – is unlikely to dominate the interest of a public whose rugby knowledge can be biased by the men’s game.
For all the talk of this being ‘the biggest World Cup yet’, the women’s game is still aware of its need to fight not necessarily harder, but smarter for eyeballs. RugbyPass, the news site owned by World Rugby, published a listicle of the top-10 players to follow on social media.
At Wednesday’s press day, Ireland fullback Stacey Flood fielded questions on Eve Higgins’ TikTok output as readily as those on her high speed output in training. Higgins is no Ilona Maher, but alongside team-mate Anna McGann, they make a decent fist of it.
For the hosts, Ireland are out of sight but not out of mind. An English journalist put it to the players that they have been labelled ‘dark horses’. No player disagreed with her. Provided injuries don’t derail them, Ireland will come firmly into view in the final pool outing against the Black Ferns.
Should New Zealand be beaten, all bets are off. Both in terms of how far they can progress and, arguably more importantly, the inevitable spike in support from back home.
