THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND women’s team will play a home game at the Aviva Stadium for the first time.
The game will be the clash against Northern Ireland on Saturday 23 September, in the inaugural edition of the Nations League. The game will be the squad’s first after this summer’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The game was initially meant to be played on 22 September, but it has now been pushed to Saturday, with a 1pm kick-off.
The squad has played out of Tallaght Stadium to now, with both of their final World Cup warm-up games taking place there, with the Aviva unavailable because of pitch maintenance.
“It is fantastic to know that our players will get to play in such an iconic stadium – one of the best in the world!”, said manager Vera Pauw. “Playing in the national stadium is another big jump forward for our team and we encourage our supporters to come out to get behind the team.
“We have had outstanding support in recent years in Tallaght Stadium – who we remain extremely grateful to – but we always said that if the right opportunity to play in the Aviva Stadium came along then we would look at it. This is that right opportunity and we want to have a record attendance to cheer the team on in their first game after the World Cup.
“On behalf of the players and staff, I’d like to thank everyone at the FAI who has made this happen. Playing this game in the Aviva Stadium can be a game-changer for women and girls’ football in Ireland.”
Ticket details will be announced soon, though the game will be included in the new, WNT-specific season ticket. Also included in the season ticket are the pre-World Cup games with Zambia and France along with the other Nations League games with Armenia and Hungary.
Speaking earlier this month, Pauw defended the price increase that has come with this new season ticket. On a match-by-match basis, the cost per ticket has increased from €10 to €18 for adults and €5 to €8 for U16s. Family bundles – for two adults and two U16s – have more than doubled to €48 from €20.
Pauw said the ticket price increase was partly driven to avoid the repeat of no-shows, with a swathe of empty seats at the sold-out World Cup qualifier against Finland last year causing disappointment.
“If you sell too cheap, people do not come”, she said. “It’s the same with perfume. Even if you say, ‘This is the same perfume’ but one is €20 and the other is €120, people will not buy it.
“With selling tickets, it is the same thing. I think it is a very reasonable price. You want families and team to still come. It’s not earning us money as everything costs more. And the money that’s coming in is going into the development of the game. We’ll see how it goes but we think we’re worth the money. We need to fill the stadium. People do not turn up if it’s too cheap.”
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