Ireland v USA: Irish skipper Griffin says players disappointed by Eddy comments

Ciara Griffin will lead Ireland against USA at the RDS Arena on Friday night

Ireland captain Ciara Griffin has said the squad were disappointed by comments made by IRFU's director of women's rugby Anthony Eddy about the support the Irish women's game receives.

Amid continuing fallout from Ireland's failure to qualify for the World Cup, Eddy defended the IRFU on Monday.

Current squad member Cliodhna Moloney was among those furious with Eddy.

"Yeah I was. We all were," replied Griffin when asked if she had been disappointed by Eddy's comments.

Speaking ahead of Friday's international against USA at the RDS Arena in Dublin, skipper Griffin said that Eddy had subsequently made contact with her to apologise for any offence taken following his comments, which some interpreted as laying all the blame for Ireland's World Cup qualifiers failure at the door of the players.

Ireland's hopes of World Cup qualification were ended by their 20-18 defeat by Scotland in Parma in September

Independent review into qualifiers failure

Ireland's missing out on next year's tournament in New Zealand led the IRFU to announce an independent review into what went wrong.

"People have their comments, that's fine, that's what the review is for, we can put our feedback into that. We're just going to trust the review process," said Griffin.

"Anthony has addressed me in terms of that he apologised in case people took offence to his comments.

"His comments were made. We now need to focus on the game, on the game at hand and we'll look at the review process after that and give our opinions there."

Ireland hooker Moloney, who like Griffin will start on Friday night, described Eddy's intervention as "slurry" in a social media post with former internationals Jenny Murphy and Claire Molloy also expressing their upset.

'I support Cliodhna 100%. We all do'

Ireland players Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe and Nichola Fryday said on Wednesday that the hooker had been speaking in a personal capacity and were reluctant to make any further comment on the issue.

However, Griffin insisted on Thursday that the Ireland camp remains united.

"I support Cliodhna 100%, we all do. This whole team backs Cliodhna, have her back, she's not alone.

"It's really important we get that point across, that this group is very close-knit, it's very tight and we have Cliodhna's back.

"We're putting all our trust in these independent reviews that our voices will be heard and these findings will be put forward and these changes will be made based on the findings."