Ireland’s women will represent Europe at the inaugural 2025 World Series to decide the final qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup after a comprehensive, eight try 42-6 win over Greece at the Gkorytsa Stadium, Aspropygos, Athens.

Ireland women’s head coach, Matt Kennerson, said: “I’m super proud of the girls. It was warm and tough and Greece came out of the blocks firing and gave us a real game. We stuck to our process, didn’t panic, kicked well and put points on. I’m really excited for the World Series, we have to go back to work and prepare for that and see what happens next.”

In hot conditions, both teams started strongly, with Greece keeping Ireland under pressure and scoreless for most of the opening quarter of the game, spurred on by large local and vociferous crowd but two tries to York Valkyrie winger Betty Lambert either side of half time saw Ireland through. 

Despite the loss, Greece staff were delighted with the progress made having fielded an almost entirely domestic squad in their three tournament games who have shown tremendous improvement over the course of the year. 

Assistant coach, Rob Tuliatu, commented: “We’ve trained really well for the last five weeks and started impressively. We tried some new things today and some worked, some did not. The girls played with a lot of spirit and we are really proud of them. Ireland were difficult to handle and credit to them. Here in Greece we look forward to continuing this momentum.”

Ireland will join Nigeria, the winners of next month’s America’s Qualifying tournament and the runner up of this month’s Pacific Bowl in 2025 in the World Series.