Ireland will play Australia in the quarter-final of the women’s rugby sevens competition at the Paris Olympics tonight after confirmation of their progression as one of the best third-place pool finishers.
It will be the second time in eight hours that the two sides will play each other after Australia beat Ireland 19-14 in their final pool earlier today, with Eve Higgins scoring all the points for Ireland.
Their quarter-final with Australia at the Stade de France will take place at 9.30pm Irish time.
Ireland had been waiting to see if they would squeeze into the quarter-finals as one of the two best third-place teams at the Paris Olympics. Ireland finished third in their pool after a 19-14 defeat to 2024 Sevens Grand Final winners Australia in their final pool game at the Stade de France.
It was a gutsy display by Ireland against the strong favourites Australia, with Eve Higgins scoring two tries and two conversions.
“It was a big 14 minutes from the girls, and we knew it was going to be really tough. Australia are one of the best teams in the world and we’d only beaten them once this season and once in the last seven or eight years. So we knew it was going to be huge and I think we really just wanted to build on the performance we had last night against South Africa,” Higgins said after.
“I think there’s a lot we can take out of that game to be very proud of but there’s also a lot we can fix and we probably didn’t capitalise on a lot of chances we had in the 22.
“Like obviously we have to sit and wait and see what happens and hopefully we’ve done enough now to get into a quarter-final and that’s 14 minutes and anything can happen.”
Ireland got an early reminder of how dangerous this Australia team is as it took them just 20 seconds to score their first try. Faith Nathan easily broke through the Ireland defence to score. But Ireland responded with impressive composure. After a Beibhinn Parson try was ruled out for a knock-on, Erin King worked brilliantly with a beauty of a pass to put Higgins over for her second try of these Olympics.
But then it was a double-hit by the Levi sisters on Ireland. Just before the half-time, Teagan Levi scored Australia’s second while at the start of the second half, his sister Madison notched up try number three for Australia. It looked like Amee Leigh Murphy Crowe – who took over as captain after Lucy Rock Mulhall was ruled out with the injury she picked up yesterday – had scored a try in the second half but she knocked the ball on in the grounding after a great tackle from Teagan Levi.
But Ireland kept the pressure on. Up stepped Higgins with her second try and conversion for Ireland.
Ireland: S Flood, A L Murphy-Crowe, B Parsons, M Burns, E Higgins, E King, E Lane. Replacements: A Orchard, V Elmes Kinlan, A Fitzpatrick, K Baker, A Larn
Australia: B Terita, F Nathan, D du Toit, T Levi, S Paki, I Nasser, M Levi. Replacements: S Smale, C Caslick, T Hinds, B Clark, K Henwood.
Referee: G Selwood (GBR)