10 hours Ago By Andrew Ryan
RUESHA LITTLEJOHN slammed the awarding of a penalty to Wales in their Euro 2025 play-off win over Ireland. The Girls in Green 's dreams of going to Switzerland next summer were extinguished at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night. Going into the second leg deadlocked at 1-1, Ireland had their chances in the first-half, with Denise O'Sullivan hitting the crossbar and Julie-Ann Russell forcing a good save from Olivia Clarke.
Disaster struck three minutes into the second-half when Anna Patten was adjudged to have handled the ball following a VAR review . Hannah Cain beat Courtney Brosnan from the penalty spot, with Ruesha Littlejohn slamming the decision. After rolling her eyes, the Scotland-born midfielder told RTE: "Honestly.
It is not coming into your head at the start of the game. You are not thinking about those moments. "You see it back and its.
..honestly it is dreadful.
Patts has gone up to head the ball and it hits her arm. "I don't know how you jump these days. I don't know if there is a new rule that you have to f***ing jump - excuse me, jump with your arms by your side.
"It is so hard to do when you are in the moment in the game. It was a tough one to take for us. We still had chances but just didn't do enough tonight.
" Now with a mountain to climb to salvage their dreams of going to Euro 2025, Ireland piled bodies forward. Unfortunately, Wales doubled their account on 67 minutes when Carrie Jones took advantage of a Caitlin Hayes error to make it 2-0. Anna Patten halved the deficit late on and, while Ireland lay siege on the visitors' goal, the away side held out to qualify for a major tournament for the first time ever.
Littlejohn admitted the earlier penalty knocked Eileen Gleeson's side and that it took them too long to rediscover their composure. She added: "We gave it our all at the end to get another one back. "If I am being honest, I think it rattled us a bit.
I don't think any of us saw it coming and it took us a wee bit to get back to the gameplan." The 34-year-old - who scored in the first leg in Cardiff - had her sentiments echoed by manager Eileen Gleeson in the post-match press conference. Gleeson batted away questions concerning her own future , with her contract set to expire following Ireland's Euro 2025 involvement.
Instead, she called for the players to pick themselves and go again with the aim of qualifying for the 2027 World Cup . The Dubliner said: “I thought in the first half we dominated, we should have finished off the chances we had. “The early penalty knocked us back a bit, we had to go again.
We had a resurgence towards the end but it was too late to get the result over the line. “We have to go again, there is another campaign, there is a World Cup. That’s football , you go again, you take the highs, you take the lows, but we always have to go again.
“Women’s football is not standing still globally, it’s not standing still in Ireland. It’s a setback and a major disappointment but we still have to keep moving forward.”.
