Republic of Ireland manager Vera Pauw hailed her team after they were narrowly beaten 1-0 by world number one side the USA in Missouri early this morning.
It was the second defeat against the USA in the space of four days but Pauw took plenty of positives from the nature of the Irish display.
With the World Cup now less than 100 days away, the Ireland manager has been eager to test her side's mettle against the very best teams in the world and there’s are none stronger than the USA.
Ireland were the better side for long periods in front of the partisan crowd at Citypark and a fortunate first-half goal was ultimately the difference between the two teams.
The USA scored what proved to be the match-winning in the 43rd minute when Alana Cook floated a hopeful ball into the Irish penalty area from distance and managed to catch goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan out of position as the ball sailed over her and into the net.
For Pauw her side’s performance was another sign of improvement as they build towards the World Cup and speaking to RTÉ Sport afterwards, she emphasised her pride in her players.
"Every game we have our best game ever, I’m so proud of that," she said. "We step up and step and step up and we’ve made a huge jump here.
"I’ve said before the camp we need this kind of resistance because without resistance you cannot push yourself. If this is 100%, you cannot push yourself and today it was 120% compared to last week.
"They are ranked number one and it hurts so much to lose like this because how many chances did they actually get? Maybe two dangerous situations, that was it in the whole game, against the number one team in the whole world.
"We have had many dangerous situations and we’re just not there yet but that will come, the aggression in front of the goal that will come. We’ve got the whole of June and we will be there in Australia."
While Pauw admitted that defeat is tough to take, she absolved goalkeeper Brosnan of blame, and praised her reaction to conceding such an unlikely goal.
"In the dressing room, we said 'Courtney, you’ve had so many fantastic moments so put this away and go into the second-half’ and it’s to her credit the way she got into the game again.
"It was so unfortunate, getting a goal like that against us and then losing a game 1-0 against an opponent that needs to end up with five defenders to stop us from our strategy to score in the last ten minutes is phenomenal.
"We’ve done so well, no points but so proud.
"To compete at the top level we need this and we will see how far we go."
Ireland midfielder Heather Payne echoed her manager’s comments about Ireland’s improvement and ability to mix it with the best in the world.
"I think in this camp we’ve made huge progress," she said.
"In the way we play, we’re more confident going forward. We’re pretty set defensively, I think we needed to work in the attack but we can take positive from both games.
"I’m disappointed in the 1-0 loss, I think we had some good chances and didn’t allow them a lot."
Payne has been part of a new-look midfield in the US as Ireland have successfully integrated the hugely experienced play-maker Sinead Farrelly, while Kyra Carusa has led the line.
The introduction of Grant on the hour mark last night saw Ireland shift to a more attacking formation with Payne and Katie McCabe given more licence to get forward and Payne believes that the added options in the centre of the park are a big boost for Ireland.
"Me and Kyra are very different, Kyra’s more of a hold-up player and I like to get in behind," she said.
"Personally I always like playing out wide so I think this allows the teams to have a different approach.
"Vera was talking about Kyra can hold it up and get me and Katie going forward and higher a bit more which seemed to work.
"How we played in the two games I think we can take lots of positives. It’s all a stepping-stone to the World Cup. We knew coming here was going to be difficult to get a result but going from 2-0 to 1-0 I think we’ll take the positives from that."
