Vera Pauw on abandoned Ireland game: “I had never experienced it before in my 47 years in football”

Republic of Ireland head coach Vera Pauw said her players “feared for their bodies” after their friendly match against Colombia on Friday was abandoned.

Irish midfielder Denise O’Sullivan was taken to hospital with a shin injury and the game was stopped after just 20 minutes following several nasty challenges.

“It was something I had never experienced before in my 47 years being involved in football, not as a player, not as a coach,” Pauw told Sky Sports.

“It started lively, a good game, normal, and then the atmosphere built up to becoming over-physical.

“Then there came a huge challenge on Denise, a challenge not within the rules of the game and she was in awful pain.

“I went to the coach of Colombia and I said: ‘I need help from you, we need to calm this down. We all want to go to the World Cup’.

“The players were extremely upset and had fear for themselves. We are not a team who fear tackles or challenges.

“I took them away to calm things down, brought them to the bench. We discussed it and there was contact with the president and the CEO of the FAI.

“Collectively we knew it would not come right any more and if it went on we would put our players into a potentially-serious situation.

“We had a calm discussion with the ref and they called off the game.”

Scans have since revealed that O’Sullivan has not sustained any fractures but the extent of a soft tissue injury has still to be discovered.

“We have hopes she can make the game but we need to see, the first 48 hours are very important in these soft tissue injuries,” Pauw added when asked about O’Sullivan.

Ireland take on Australia

Ireland begin their 2023 World Cup campaign against co-hosts Australia in Sydney on Thursday 20 July.

Colombia respond

The Colombian Football Federation (FCF) have released a statement, which read: “The Colombian Football Federation informs that the friendly match… between the Colombia women’s national team and Ireland was suspended because the Irish national team preferred not to continue playing when 23 minutes of the first half had elapsed.”