Karen Duggan: Vera Pauw’s mystifying changes backfired badly against Canada

Ah, I didn’t expect to feel as dejected as this. After all, I had wondered if even getting to this World Cup felt a little ahead of schedule in terms of this team’s development. I was proven wrong.

These players were ready to perform on that stage. They were ready to compete. They weren’t just happy to be there. But, come full-time against Canada, they were left pondering a bunch of what-ifs. And that’s what accounted for their tears.

But they can hold their heads high. Effort, endeavour, talent, skill, none of those qualities can be called in to question. And in that first half against Canada, we saw just how good this team can be. The shackles were off. It was so, so good to watch. Until then, there was a tactical noose around them.

We were braver and more aggressive than we were against Australia, and that was down to a change in attitude from the players. They weren’t going to sit back and let their World Cup drift from view.

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They wanted to show their personality. They wanted to show vigour and fight. They wanted to prove that there’s so much more in us than what we saw for most of the Australian game.

Ruesha Littlejohn was phenomenal. She did the dirty work that allowed us get players on the ball. Kyra Carusa was a powerhouse up front. She was everything you want in a striker when you play the way we do. She bullied their back line. She scared them. And she brought our midfielders in to the game.

Lucy Quinn was brilliant. Her positioning was perfect, she knew when to engage in the press and when to give cover. And Sinead Farrelly got to show her immense football IQ after finally being given the chance to get on the ball in the areas where she can cause damage.

The problem? All four of those players, so influential in the game, were substituted by the 65th minute, Quinn at half-time.

I’m at a loss to understand those changes, especially that triple substitution with 25 minutes still to go. It was all a bit chaotic. And so uncharacteristic of Vera Pauw who has often frustrated us by not using her bench, or making her changes too late.

Taking off Ruesha, Kyra and Sinead at the same time meant we lost three vastly experienced players who stay calm in high-pressure scenarios, and you need sound heads at a time like that. They were the glue between the lines in the first half, they kept the ball moving, creating those triangles and patterns of play. If tiredness was an issue, then stagger their withdrawals. All at the same time? It just caused disarray.

And taking Lucy off at half-time? Why? She was playing so well. I wanted to see Abbie Larkin, her replacement, in the game, she was fantastic when she came on against Australia, but that was at a stage when the game had opened up and she had freedom to roam.

What we needed going in to the second half against Canada was to keep it tight. We’d conceded just before half-time, so the key was to take any momentum away from them in those opening 10 minutes or so, to regroup and get back to how we were playing in that first half. Same shape, same personnel. Why take off a player who had contributed so much, in attack and defence, to that effort?

Whether Vera felt pressurised by all the calls for Abbie to feature, I don’t know, she certainly hasn’t given in to that kind of pressure before. But I wonder if it was playing on her mind, like there was a predetermined decision to replace Lucy with Abbie at half-time, regardless of how well Lucy had done?

[ Put Áine O’Gorman’s name down under ‘Irish trailblazer’ ]

All I could imagine was how the Canadians breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the players we took off, especially Carusa after the way she had tormented their back line, not least Kadeisha Buchanan. I think she could have gone on for longer and posed a big threat, and we missed her physical presence. Why not bring on extra attackers to play alongside or either side of her?

It was the best Irish performance I’ve seen in a long time, at the break I’d have been saying ‘more of the same’. A draw was enough to keep hope alive, why make such radical changes to a line-up that, until then, had outplayed the Olympic champions?

I’d guess Canada got a rollicking at half-time, and rightly so. The changes they made adding substantially to their second-half efforts, not least through the introduction of Christine Sinclair.

But, having been a shambolic set of individuals in the first half, we gave them the space to grow into a team in the second. They stepped up their game, they knew how to put us to the sword, something we have yet to learn to do to opponents when we go a goal up. The killer second goal eluded us.

But God, it was there for us. It was on a plate. The age-old issue of a lack of concentration that leads to ruinous mistakes, and not being able to come back from a deficit, haunted us yet again. And our plan B is still a work in progress.

But maybe Vera doesn’t think she has the players capable of having a plan B, that we don’t possess the quality to produce one? We do. These players are sponges to information, the younger ones so eager to learn. Work with them on the training ground, take away that tactical noose, stop working on one thing and one thing only, allow them to fly.

So, yes, I feel dejection for these players, but I am so, so proud of them. None more so than Aine O’Gorman, someone I’ve played with for years and who’s been my captain, someone you’d follow to the ends of the earth.

She’s soldiered on through the years, keeping her place in the squad while playing as an amateur, holding down a job and having a family. She represents everyone who has come through our league.

She faced all those barriers, sacrificed holidays, took unpaid leave and was fighting the good fight long before the rest of us. When she came in as a last minute replacement for the injured Heather Payne, and bellowed out the anthem, yeah, my tears flowed. Mostly because she’s just a really, really good person.

That she and her team-mates won’t go deeper in to this World Cup, that’s a bitter pill to swallow. There’ll be soul-searching. They will, I think, question the tactical approach of their coach. Maybe, just maybe, they had a whole lot more potential than she ever realised.