Women’s Rugby World Cup: Ireland ‘raring to go’ against New Zealand

Scrum-half Emily Lane says Ireland are “raring to go” and “looking forward to the challenge” of facing defending champions New Zealand in Sunday’s World Cup Pool C decider in Brighton.

Both sides have already reached the quarter-finals after winning their opening two matches with bonus points, but the winner of Sunday’s game will top the group.

“It’s great that we have qualified but we all want to go out this weekend and perform, put our hand up and try to top the pool,” said Lane.

“We just want to show the world that we’re capable of competing with the top-class teams in the world like New Zealand, who have won the World Cup six times.

“They are a world-class team and we respect that so we want to bring our best foot forward going into this game.”

Ireland beat Japan 42-14 in their opening game before defeating Spain 43-27 last weekend, but Costigan knows there are some areas of performance to address before facing the might of the Black Ferns.

“You have to recognise the positives but we still have room for improvement, we want to minimise our penalties, be more physical and stop those tries.

“As backs we have been working on executing in the green zone, scoring tries, and I think we’ve been doing that.

“Hopefully we can put into practice what we’ve been trying to fix from those two games.”