Ireland not looking to play it safe against Black Ferns in World Cup showdown

Aoife Wafer during an Ireland gym session at the Underground Gym, Brighton. Pic: Ben Brady, Inpho

Ireland will have a full pack to choose from when they face the Black Ferns in Brighton this weekend with Aoife Wafer and Sam Monaghan both set to overcome injury issues in time for the World Cup showdown.

And they aim to use what they have available.

Wafer hasn’t played since the Six Nations with a knee injury but has been upping her preparations behind the scenes while Ireland opened their tournament account with bonus-point defeats of Japan and Spain in Northampton.

Monaghan, not long back from injury herself, had to retire early against the Spanish last week due to what has turned out to be a hip injury but scrum coach Denis Fogarty has confirmed that both players, and everyone else, are fit for Sunday.

“We took her off as a precaution,” Fogarty said of Monaghan. “She wasn’t moving well in the game when she took that knock. We had an install session today and everyone has taken part, getting through what our plan is for the week. At the moment everyone is in contention.

Wafer, meanwhile, has “continued on her progression” and is on the training paddock.

Ireland and New Zealand are both already qualified for the quarter-finals after the opening two rounds which means that the game at the 31,000-capacity Amex Stadium is by no means a do-or-die affair.

On offer is the top spot in the group and the easier of the last eight ties with the winner all but certain to avoid France a week later. A carrot, then, but the counter is that this is arguably a week to sit out players who might be a scintilla short of 100% fitness.

Fogarty wasn’t having that.

“First and foremost for us is making sure that if people are fit and ready to play we want to get them on the park because, ultimately, we're going out to perform and we're going out to actually win the game.

“That's been the goal for us all this time. So I understand that there's a quarter-final, but the way we've been building, and how we train and compete for training, is we're fully focused on this game and making sure that we have a performance in place to give us that momentum going into a quarter final.

“So if everyone is available to play, we want to get them on the pitch.” Ireland have beaten New Zealand in two out of the three previous meetings, most recently in Vancouver last year in the WXV1 tournament. Fogarty understands that the world champions will be chomping at the bit for this one.

“It’s probably a natural thing that you're going to get a reaction. But we're expecting a huge physical battle, that's without a doubt.

"They've got incredible players and athletes all around the park so for us it is making sure that we're on it from both a setpiece point of view and a defensive point of view, because we're very aware of the threats they have around the field.

“So it's getting our game right, making sure we're playing in the right areas of the park and not giving them kind of easy entries, like what we probably did last week, so ensuring we don't do that. We've spoken about that, and putting things in place to ensure we don't do that.”