‘WE DIDN’T PERFORM TO OUR ABILITY’
From Back Page defenders, they had an extra person in midfield and we had to address that.
‘But I think the first half, we killed ourselves. We weren’t doing the simple things right, picking up runners from corners, not taking care of the ball, not picking up second ball. We lost a lot of ball, especially through the middle and we can only take responsibility for that ourselves.’
After such an encouraging performance against Italy, defeat burst the bubble for
Gleeson in what was Ireland’s first defeat since losing to Canada at the World Cup.
‘These things are always about consistency and we have to learn if the game starts badly, we have to fix that ourselves on the pitch. We have come off the back of a good performance and Wales are essentially like for like with us, they have come off experience of League A, they played Germany, Denmark and Iceland.
‘We gave respect to them, have the same profile across players and the level they are playing at, the clubs and league they play in. Very like for like.
‘We feel that we didn’t perform to our ability tonight. That is the only thing we can take in terms of learning. We feel that wasn’t our best, we had a really good performance against Italy and again, it was the second game. There was fatigue around players and we are managing loads at different points of the season. And a lot of things around it but we wouldn’t be happy with that performance.’
The promptings of Jess Ziu, who was a lively presence on the right wing, was one of the few bright spots as was the international debut of Emily Murphy.
‘As much as I am giving out, there are positives. Jess Ziu, a really good game, a bright aspect for tonight, and Emily Murphy coming on, she is strong and physical and understands the game, so there are positives. The second half is better than the first but (there was) a learning that you can’t give you that much to do.’
And Ireland will need to do much better come April.