After a night when almost everything had gone in her side’s favour apart from the one number that mattered, Vera Pauw was still quick to reach for some important statistics.
Deep under the west stand of CityPark in St Louis, the manager had stepped outside the Ireland dressingroom to weigh up a second defeat in four days for her side. With the World Cup’s own counter clicking down to 99 and now 98 days away, Pauw was asked if she had seen that group rivals Australia, who Ireland meet in the tournament opener, had recorded an impressive victory over England in London earlier on Tuesday.
“Ah, but did you see the stats? Did you see them?” she asked. The journalist shook his head sheepishly. “Have a look at the stats! It’s one of those games.”
Pauw’s side, it could be argued, had just rounded off two of “those games” on their week Stateside. The raw, top line numbers told they had played twice, lost twice and failed to score in over three hours of football. But with great justification, everyone with a green lens was looking beyond those.
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Tuesday’s 1-0 defeat had been another step up and another step forward in the penultimate game before Pauw names her squad for a historic first trip to the World Cup. Against the back-to-back holders, Ireland had been full of positivity, purpose too. They may have created a couple less chances than in an impressive opening showing on the tour in Texas last Saturday but they had served up a better overall performance. Step back and the body of work over eight days here looked different and felt different, especially for those in the middle of it.
“Football is a game of momentum. Even in the little moments, you can feel a shift, you can feel a difference as a player on the pitch,” said striker Kyra Carusa, arguably the player to come away with the most positivity from the tour. “That’s when big things can happen and this feels like a momentum shift. It’s not just me who feels that way. It’s everyone. That confidence is contagious. It makes us really special.”
Carusa, at the tip of the remoulded 5-4-1 spear, had followed a busy and bright performance on Saturday with an even better one in Missouri. From the very get go she led the line to great effect, her holdup play buying time and bringing wing backs Katie McCabe and Heather Payne into things as Ireland passed with penetration and changed the points of attack constantly.
On the left, Marissa Sheva was relentless in front of McCabe and Lucy Quinn similar on the other side. Even when pressure arrived, they eschewed the tested release of going long. Over the 90 minutes Ireland almost shared possession with the world’s best team, 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Sinead Farrelly was absent Tuesday but the midfielder’s addition during this camp already feels like a key juncture.
“It brings more variety to us as a team. There are different phases, different focuses,” said Carusa. “We can choose what faces of us we want to show a team, what we want to come out with. For me, it’s a comfortable position to play in. I’m happy to see the rest of our team also be comfortable with being uncomfortable, really. That’s what these games are: you’re going to have to be uncomfortable, the World Cup will be uncomfortable. You’re going to have to find a way to thrive in that.”
For those brushing up on their World Cup phrase books, Carusa described her role now as a “proper post-up number nine″. Veteran Diane Caldwell added another to the lexicon when she called this fresh identity as an “aggressive low block”.
“It’s getting that balance of being in a low block but still being aggressive, still pressing and forcing the opponent back,” said the defender. “I think that’s what we’ve done to a T in these last two games.”
All of Ireland’s excellent work on Tuesday was cruelly undone just a couple of minutes before the break when Courtney Brosnan, otherwise excellent, misjudged a deep ball from US defender Alana Cook. It would be the game’s only goal. But Carusa revealed the goalkeeper’s halftime command to her team-mates to go again rallied them. It’s the kind of spirit that runs up and down the squad.
“I always say this about Ireland, it’s what makes us that much more special,” said Carusa. “With the squad and the depth there is, everyone is like [Courtney], that contagious energy, that mentality, that relentlessness. It’s very Irish of us. It’s something special about our side.”
Spirit, alas, doesn’t show up on the scoreboard. Goals remain an issue and in Pauw’s list of priorities for the two pre-tournament tests that remain – against Zambia and France – finding a sharper edge in front of goal must be near the top.
“I think that the next step is the clinical aspect of it,” added Carusa, who had a goal chalked off in the first friendly in Austin. “At this level, you’re playing against the US, you’re only going to get so many chances. But these games give us a lot of confidence and to score goals you have to be confident and you have to be brave. I feel that the team feels they have the ability to be brave.”
Before she left to plot the path home and ahead from there, Pauw said she is dreading some of the selection decisions to come. A whole other numbers game awaits.
