Ireland's performances at the WXV have made other nations stand up and take notice, according to stand-in captain Enya Breen.
Scott Bemand’s side face USA in their final game of the annual tournament on Friday night in Vancouver (kick-off 8.30pm Irish time), knowing they could potentially finish as high as second in the table with a bonus-point win.
Ireland have climbed from tenth to sixth in the world rankings during 2024, and have been the surprise package of the WXV, stunning world champions New Zealand in their opening game last week.
An impressive win against Australia in Belfast preceded that victory against the Black Ferns, and although they fell to a 21-8 defeat to the number two-ranked Canada on Saturday, there is an opportunity to bounce right back against the USA in their final game on Friday.
"I think one thing we’ve been looking at a lot over the last few weeks is trying to make ourselves respected again as a team," said Breen (below), who captains the Ireland side to face the USA on Friday in the absence of the injured Edel McMahon.
"Putting our name back among the top teams, and to be able to get some results over the last few weeks, it’s been great for that, but it’s also been great for momentum.
"And there’s a great buzz around the camp, people are loving the challenge, and people are rising to the challenge every week in training and every weekend in games."
Bemand, who took over as head coach following Ireland’s winless Six Nations campaign in 2023, is confident his side can cap off an exceptional season with one last performance.
"We’ve been consistent in talking about winning performances. So it will be the performance that produces the result," the Ireland coach said, after making three changes to his side following last week’s defeat.
"We’ve been able to bring our training ID over here, we’ve been able to compete really hard within training so there’s some girls that are ecstatic to get a look-in, there’s some girls that have missed out, just.
"There’s a big opportunity in this game. We want to put our best performance out there, we want to be coming home having picked up wins. So if we get to the end of this competition and we leave this autumn block – and we include the Australia game in that – and if we go home winning three and losing one, we’d have been moving momentum in the right direction.
"Enya mentioned there about us wanting to leave these shores being respected. I think we’re earning that.
"I think even the game against Canada the other day, the Canadians were complimenting our players after saying how physical it was. We’ve got to keep backing that up.
"It's not about winning and going to sleep. We want to back up what we’ve done thus far in this series. We’re in a good position to do it.
"We got the bodies fresh, the minds are eager, we just got to produce that performance at the weekend."
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