Denise O’Sullivan was pulling the strings once again for the Republic of Ireland as they triumphed 9-0 (aggregate) over Georgia in the October European Championship qualifiers. The Halfway Line had the chance to hear from O’Sullivan after the emphatic victory that saw the Girls in Green qualify for a place in the playoff final against Wales.
O’Sullivan walked into the press room kitted out, wearing Ireland’s 2007/08 away kit with a faded number 11 on the back, and she got straight to telling the assembled media about her assessment of the match. She reported, “We got off to a better start [than the first leg]. Quicker tempo, you can get frustrated playing against a low block” she continued, “We’ll get ready for the Wales game. I think we have a lot to improve on of course.”
Ireland have had ‘a fantastic camp’ reports O’Sullivan
O’Sullivan has played for Ireland for 13 years and her enthusiasm has not dwindled. She spoke on how much the squad have enjoyed this camp, as well as the great atmosphere around the team. She relayed, “Its been about three months [since the last camp], we were all buzzing to get back. It has been a fantastic camp, the girls are great. There is always a good vibe around the camp and the staff are absolutely fantastic with the squad.”
Ireland and O’Sullivan will not have to wait so long to return to camp this time, with Friday night the next time the team will join up when they face Wales at Cardiff City Stadium.
Wales have ‘a strong mentality’ praises O’Sullivan
O’Sullivan was extremely respectful Ireland’s next opponents in this campaign reflecting, “Look, we all spoke about it and we didn’t really mind who we get in the next round, I think Wales and Slovakia are two very strong squads. Wales, we’ve played them plenty of times, we played them at the start of this year and look we’ve lost that game, but we can improve from that now and we look forward to it.” O’Sullivan’s long history facing Wales goes all the way back to her first ever match, she made her debut for Ireland against Wales scoring twice in a 2-0 win.
The Cork native was complimentary about Ireland’s celtic neighbours but was quick to note the talent in her own squad, she noted, “they’ve a strong mentality, as I said they are a strong squad but I think with our squad we have a lot of talent, we have a mixture of leaders, a mixture of youth, you can see we have players like Abbie Larkin who stepped up coming into the squad to give us that boost.”
O’Sullivan was also keen to extoll how impressed she was with Ireland’s young and up and coming talent with Abbie Larkin especially impressive in her view, she exclaimed, “Abbie Larkin the other night, I thought she was absolutely fantastic she created a lot for us. Jessie [Stapleton] coming in tonight putting a stamp on it too.”
‘The goal is to get to the Euros’
O’Sullivan did not want to go into too much detail about her feelings around the second leg at the AVIVA she stated, “the goal is to get to the Euros.” However O’Sullivan was happy with the support on the night and expressed excitement for an even bigger crowd come December, she remarked, “as you can see we had a lot of fans come out tonight and going to the AVIVA hopefully we will get a big crowd.”
