Pauw says Ireland fear no one after tough draw
Pauw will spread her net wide in support of Ireland’s World Cup cause
VERA PAUW has insisted that her Ireland team will fear no one after their daunting World Cup draw yesterday – but the scramble to find funding for tournament preparations is under way.
After a draw that pitched Ireland into a hugely challenging Group B with co-hosts Australia, who they meet in their opener on July 20, as well as reigning Olympic champions Canada on July 26 and Nigeria – widely recognised as Africa’s strongest team – on July 31, Pauw (right) said efforts are in train to find opponents for warm-up matches during next month’s international window.
She stressed she was not trying to put pressure on the FAI, but revealed she used up funds allocated to the November window for a training camp ahead of last June’s qualifier against Georgia.
Despite the association being in debt to the tune of €63 million, however, there will be an expectation that Pauw’s heroes are given every necessary backing as they prepare for a debut World Cup appearance in less than 10 months’ time.
It seems certain that the blue-chip sponsors associated with the side will also offer any support required.
‘Everyone is looking into
IRISH roots have started to appear in the family trees of some ambitious players of late. Vera Pauw laughed yesterday as she spoke from a hotel in Auckland following the World Cup draw. Since her team beat Scotland last week to qualify the Republic of Ireland women’s side for its first major tournament, Pauw’s email account has featured some interesting traffic.
Success has a funny way of unearthing previously undiscovered, or ignored, ties to the old country.
‘It’s funny,’ said the Ireland manager. ‘When you qualify, suddenly there are a lot of players with Irish backgrounds. They email you and they weren’t emailing you before you qualified.’
She saw the humour in it, but she is too pragmatic and too canny a professional to dismiss them.
It may be unashamedly opportunistic, and some will complain if caps are given to players advertising their Irishness only now the team is winning, but the deal cuts both ways: Pauw knows she could find a valuable talent
When you qualify, suddenly there are a lot of players with Irish backgrounds
hidden among those pleading their cases.
‘There are players that we’re really looking into,’ she confirms. ‘Don’t get me wrong, we see every player playing every single week because the streams these days are very good.’
She is as concerned, though, with watching those players already available to her, too.
‘But I will travel of course. We are going to look into players that are just close to the team, and see where they are.
‘We are going to look at players who are on the bench and if they can take over, because every game was a game that we couldn’t take a miss (in qualifying).
‘So we have now, in the November (window), we could have the time to try out players stepping up. And there are players abroad that are now showing up and we really have to look into, but they must have a very tight connection with Ireland.
‘And the players that we have now on the sheet that we are going to look at already have an Irish passport. So they are not obtaining a passport, they have a passport but are playing abroad. We are looking into that.’
Ireland can’t afford to sacrifice the possibility of improvement on the altar of principle, especially when other countries wouldn’t dream of doing so.
And the tournament draw yesterday morning was a bracing reminder of Ireland’s status going into next summer’s World Cup.
Ranked 24th in the world and debutants on this stage, they were outsiders to begin with and, following a draw that put them in a group with Australia, co-hosts and ranked 13th in the world, Olympic champions Canada (seventh in the world) and Nigeria, rated the world’s 45th team but deemed much better than that, their prospects of getting out of the pool don’t look strong.
Their chances won’t be helped by landing in the group that requires them to criss-cross a vast country. They start against Australia in Sydney on July 20, before having to travel west to play Canada in Perth six days later.
On July 31, following another journey running to thousands of kilometres, they will play Nigeria in Brisbane.
It means that the coming week will see Pauw, and the support staff that accompanied her to Auckland for the draw, spend days assessing hotels and training facilities.
One pressing decision will centre on whether Ireland should choose a central base and travel to and from the cities where they are playing, or whether they will move camp across the country ahead of each match.
These, along with the budget considerations highlighted by Pauw elsewhere in these pages today, are dilemmas that no previous Ireland manager had to confront.
It illustrates the novelty of the situation Ireland face, but the vast experience of Pauw counters it.
She has coached at two major tournaments, leading her native Holland to the last four of the 2009 European Championships in Finland. They played the hosts in the pool stages on that occasion, losing to the Finns, but the memory of taking on a home country, complete with partisan support, should be useful.
So will the 2016 Olympic Games, where Pauw managed a South African team that played hosts Brazil. ‘Of course, when you are more experienced you know what to expect so that helps,’ she nodded.
‘But the key thing is that the players know what to expect. That is my task, together with the fantastic staff that we have.
‘We prepare the players as well as we can, and so far that went okay.
We played with South Africa in Manaus against Brazil, in a full stadium, and we played the best game ever (the outsiders drew 0-0 with the hosts).
‘Relating it to the task and getting the players completely ready for the task on the pitch so they have the freedom of execution, I think in my opinion that that is the best way to prepare them for these kind of games.’
While attention has been drawn to Australia as hosts and Canada, given their pedigree, Pauw is especially wary of Nigeria.
They are 45th in the world rankings but this, she said, is down to the few opportunities they get to play better teams outside of Africa, where the women’s game generally is not as strong as in other parts of the world.
‘If you are in Africa and you play only African teams, and you are yourself the highest in Africa, you can win 10-0 and you still do not go up (in the rankings) because those teams are ranked under you,’ she explained.
‘So we should really know that Nigeria, they are a very good team and if they would play in Europe, they would have qualified also.’