'That's an Irish mentality' - Carla Ward hails spirit in Turkey

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

Carla Ward believes "an Irish mentality" helped her side turn things around against Turkey and keep their Nations League promotion hopes alive.
One down heading into the 80th minute, a Busem Seker OG and an excellent Emily Murphy volley got the Republic of Ireland out of Istanbul with a precious 2-1 victory.
They finish their campaign with a clash against unbeaten Slovenia at Páirc Ui Chaoimh on Tuesday. The Girls in Green were hammered 4-0 in Koper, so they must beat the Slovenians by five goals or more to top the group and gain promotion to League A.
If they don't, Ireland will head for the two-legged promotion/relegation play-offs in the autumn, when they'll be pitted against one of the third-placed League A sides.
"That's character, that's character for you," Ward told RTÉ Sport when reflecting on Friday's win.
"That's an Irish mentality... never rolling over. Even when we went 1-0 down - which we're disappointed with the goal - the reaction after that, the togetherness, the attitdue to go and win tackles, close gaps, making sure we were front footed is something we can walk away and be proud of.
"I actually think winning it like that at the death puts us in a good position for Tuesday."
Any late win is a sweet one, but overall this was not a strong Irish display. They looked short of ideas against well organised, physical opponents, delivering another under-par first-half showing - something that's become a bad habit over the last few matches.
"It's something we've got to keep addressing," Ward said. "We've got to keep trying to work out why, and it's something we spoke about before the game, 'let's not wait till half-time to adjust and go after things, we have to start brighter'.
"We can't wait for 45 minutes against Slovenia to be at them. There's going to be a lot of looking at that. We've got to dissect it, we've got to get into it, we'll go and have some honest conversations about how we start bright.
"But listen this group's hungry. They don't want to roll over, they want to go. We've got a young and hungry squad that want to all play.
"We saw that tonight with some changes. We need to be way better come Tuesday. There'll be a few things we need to tweak again, but the most important thing is we got the three points."
Slovenia have won all five of their games so far and utterly dismantled Ireland back in February. Managed by Sasa Kolman, who counts Donegal boss Jim McGuinness as mentor, they are unquestionaly a coming team.
To beat them by any scoreline will require a top performance . To beat them by five would be a minor miracle.
But Ward insists her players will keep the faith and give everything to pull off what would be a remarkable result.
"We've lost one game, which we know hurt us," she added. "We walked away with a win tonight, let's remember that. We've put ourselves in a position were we can go on Tuesday and try and finish top. If we don't, then we've put oursleves in a position now where we get a second bite of the cherry in (the play-offs in) October.
"We have to win 5-0, which is not easy against any team now because women's football is improving in every country as you can see in all the Nations Leagues, A, B and C. So it's going to be tough.
"One thing we will do is go out there with an attitude, a mindset and a belief that anything is possible. The Irish love that. I love that. It's why I took the job. We'll certainly give it absolutely everything.
"I've heard an awful lot about Cork, I've heard about the noise down there. We're going to need everyone. We're going to need every single bit of Irish noise and blood because we're going to give everything, and we need the fans to back us, we need the fans to be there, loud.