{"id":213132,"date":"2025-12-03T12:22:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T12:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213132\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T12:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T12:22:18","slug":"ruaidhri-oconnor-ireland-have-never-had-a-better-chance-to-break-world-cup-glass-ceiling-as-scotland-game-looms-large","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213132\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u00faaidhr\u00ed O\u2019Connor: Ireland have never had a better chance to break World Cup glass ceiling as Scotland game looms large"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Andy Farrell knows his Ireland side have a great chance to break their World Cup glass ceiling. Picture: Tim Clayton\/Corbis via Getty Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/db0e6012-ce2f-4bc3-8271-616f17685638.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Andy Farrell knows his Ireland side have a great chance to break their World Cup glass ceiling. Picture: Tim Clayton\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">To paraphrase Mick McCarthy, Andy Farrell would have bitten your hand off for a scenario where his Ireland team had to beat Scotland and Argentina to reach a first World Cup semi-final, most likely against England.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">That is what is on offer to Ireland at the 2027 World Cup if they get their business done in an eminently winnable pool by beating Scotland, a path to the final that doesn\u2019t involve New Zealand, France or South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Farrell knows his Ireland side have a great chance to break their World Cup glass ceiling. Picture:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[70904,18,19,17,4934,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-213132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andy-farrell","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-ruaidhri-oconnor","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}