By Milly McEvoy
Ireland captain Edel McMahon revealed her side always believed they could beat world champions New Zealand before doing just that in WXV1.
Erin King’s last-gasp try gave Ireland a 29-27 win over New Zealand as Scott Bemand’s side become the only team to have a positive win record over the Black Ferns.
Victory in Vancouver on Sunday marked Ireland’s second win in three meetings with the back-to-back World Cup winners and comes just a year after Ireland played in the third tier of the new WXV competition.
“It is an unbelievable feeling but the group have had a massive belief all week,” she said.
“We believe in what we are doing, we believe in the connections we have with each other, we believe in the staff.
“We work really hard off pitch and we work even harder on pitch, we compete in every training session, so for us, that just validates what we are doing and I couldn’t be prouder of the girls.”
Ireland had enjoyed a difficult few years, failing to qualify for the 2021 Rugby World Cup before a bottom place finish in the 2023 Women’s Six Nations saw them take on the likes of Kazakhstan, Colombia and Spain.
But a third-place finish in this year’s Six Nations set up a date with the best teams in the world, beginning with world no.2 New Zealand.
Aoife Wafer kept her side in the contest with two tries, before Neve Jones scored as the two sides went in all-square at the break.
King then scored the first of her two tries only for Mererangi Paul to move New Zealand five points ahead with minutes remaining in the game.
Lightning struck twice for Ireland though as King again crossed before Dannah O’Brien held her nerve to kick the match-winning conversion and secure a famous and unprecedented victory.
McMahon added: “The minute the opportunity came, we thought ‘absolutely we deserve to be up with the best’.
“And that is where we want to challenge ourselves because we know we have a World Cup to compete in and this is the platform where we get to show the world that we can.”
For head coach Scott Bemand, he believes pragmatism has helped his side get a confidence-boosting victory.
And the pragmatism will continues as he encourages his side to reset and go again as they take on hosts Canada, who beat France in their first game.
Bemand said: “We said we wanted to be a hard team to beat and first and foremost you have to build really strong foundations and then you can start working on other parts of the game, it can’t and won’t come the other way round.
“We talk about building experiences so being pragmatic has given us the opportunity to win a game.
“We’re not getting ahead of ourselves, it is a really big moment for this group, it is a really big moment for Irish women’s rugby but we have got to keep going after it.
“There are two games left to come so we are going to enjoy it but we are going to keep going after it.
“We are going to keep building, we are going to keep building momentum and roll on next week.”