Ireland vs Nigeria Match Thread

  Nearly as much as you love Ryan Manning and Torun ❤️❤️

It wasn't long ago our Women's side had to change out of their tracksuits in the airport to hand them back to the FAI. We have come on so much in the last few years but still have a long way to go to get properly near the countries who have massively invested in the game for a couple of decades. Down here the Matildas are far more famous than the men's team. They are on every second ad and they are household names playing with top teams including Chelsea, Arenal and Real. Abbey Larkin, an 18 year old from Rovers, came on in front of 75000 crazy Aussie fans and ran rings around them. Just look at the crazy stat of the difference between the number of caps between the 2 sets of subs at the Canada game. They were lightyears ahead and we still pushed them all the way. 

Pauw has done an incredible job regardless of the whether she should or shouldn't have said certain things. Ask any fan who was in Pauw's company over the past few weeks; she could not have been nicer, more passionate and more proud of her team. 

Having been to Athens in June and watching the girls play over the last 2 weeks, I can easily say that the girls show much more pride and passion wearing the green jersey right now and Pauw has been massively behind that. 

If we lose her, it'll be a massive setback. It'll be back to someone like Noel King going around in circles 

McCabe's outburst was caught on camera and picked up by everybody including the journalists who posed the question to Pauw, she played it down really by saying yeah she's not the coach etc...

I have no issue in McCabe as captain approaching the manager and asking to make changes or looking to alter formation etc... it's the manner in which she did it is the issue - the petulance.

We see these things happen in every game but it's done in a more subtle way.

Her contract expires at the end of the competition of course she going to be asked questions.  They are doing their job.  They are not cheerleaders or fans or there to help the team.  They are there to cover the story and investigate and uncover any stories being hidden or glossed over.  

They were standard questions and if there was no issues in the squad they would have been batted away quite easily.  The vacuum from the fai and lack of support from the players has left Vera exposed.  She knows it too. 

In the middle of the tournament though and between games? It hardly seems the time and place. I'm not sure what it added to our World Cup experience either and may well have introduced a sour note to the whole thing and how it ended.

The really top managers build up a rapport with journalists or an element of control over the press. Fergie was so secure in his role at United, that he was able to almost bully journalists at times. He could have journalists banned from press conferences or decide not to do interviews with media outlets he didn't like e.g. The BBC. The means you can control the narrative more. 

At the end of the day, journalists are fine if they're asking reasonable questions and getting the truth out there. 

Not when Éire lift The World Cup in 2027.