European Elite Round
12.04.2022 at 14:00 - Bazaly Stadium, Ostrava
As Round 2 draws to its close, Dave Connell’s Republic of Ireland Women’s Under-19s will take on Greece in the last of three games based in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
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12th Apr 2022
The Girls in Green got their campaign off to a flying start beating the host country, Czech Republic, 2-0 last week. Soon after they met current title holders, France, and suffered a 3-0 defeat on Saturday.
To proceed in the competition, Ireland must rely on the French losing to the Czech Republic as well as scoring 6+ goals in their performance against Greece. Although a tough round, the team have done incredibly well with their progress with multiple stand-out performances.
One of which was Wexford Youths' Becky Watkins. She elaborates on the progress so far: “The first game we got a positive result, we beat Czech Republic 2-0, everyone was kind of buzzing after that, like we said, we’d take it one match at a time. We really focused on them first. Then we went in to the France game, I think our mindset was really good going in to it. Everyone was really positive and I love that, even though the were the top three in the world, everyone was so positive going in to it. Obviously after it we had to hold our hands up and say they were the better team on the day.”
The defeat was a blow to the team, especially with the chance of progressing at risk: “Everyone was really sad about it after. It’s looking like we aren’t qualifying, we never know what can happen but I think we’ve kind of picked up the morale around camp and we’re ready to go now tomorrow.”
Looking forward to the Greek game, Watkins is optimistic: “We were training today and everyone looked really good. I was really impressed with how training went today. We were just practicing the tactics for tomorrow. Everyones looking really well and we’re really looking forward to it.”
Unfortunately for this team, it will be many player’s final underage performance in the green jersey. Becky explained how the team felt about this. “I think for a lot of us it is our last underage game and it’s a lot of our last year at Under 19s, there’s a few obviously coming up next year but I think for that it’ll be kind of a sad one for everyone but we want to finish on a high and just enjoy it as much as we can as our last game.”
UEFA WOMEN'S UNDER-19 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIERS
ROUND 2 - GROUP A7
Greece v Republic of Ireland
Tuesday, April 12th
Bazaly Stadium, Ostrava
KO 14:00 (15:00 local time)
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