Ireland's Linda Djougang says that while their win over New Zealand at the WXV1 came as a "shock" back home, the team believed their hard work was going to pay off.
Prop Djougang played the full 80 minutes as Scott Bemand’s side recorded a 29-27 five-try victory over the Black Ferns, World Cup winners two years ago, on Monday morning.
"It was a great win. For everybody back home it was a shock but it’s something that we’ve been really working on," the 28-year-old, whose team jumped from tier three of the competition to tier one after a third-place finish in the Six Nations, said.
"It’s really the work that we’ve been doing on and off the field from player to management.
"This tournament, going from WXV3 to WXV1, that is a massive lift. But we were so ready for it.
"We just needed to bring our physicality, which we did. Just play our shape, play what we’ve been trained to do.
"We had belief in ourselves and we've been training hard for years.
"It was a nice reward for all the hard work while we have so much more to bring."
Canada, who replaced the Black Ferns as world number two thanks to a 46-24 win over France at the weekend, are next up for Ireland, now sixth in the rankings, on Saturday night (11.45pm Irish time).
"We're back focused on Canada now, our minds are switched on and we look forward to the game on Saturday," added the Cameroon-born Leinster front row.
Defence coach Hugh Hogan said: "Test rugby comes down to moments.
"We gave ourselves chances by creating moments and the players had the courage of their convictions to go and take that moment at the end of the game.
"There’s always things that we can improve on.
"There’s aspects of our defence that we can get better, there’s layers in our attack that we’re going to try and build in over the course of this competition so we’re looking to improve again this week.
"A positive for us was our calmness, our clarity.
"We didn’t deviate from the plan, we had belief in what we wanted to go about in the weekend.
"We knew New Zealand would test us, and we were stretched at times but we were able to able to actually handle them."
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