Monaghan 'proud' of Ireland's second-half showing

Ireland captain Sam Monaghan says she was "really proud" of her side's second-half performance in their 47-26 defeat to Canada in Belfast.

In their final warm-up game before the Women's Rugby World Cup, Ireland recovered from conceding five first-half tries to score three of their own after the break.

And while they ultimately lost by 21 points, Monaghan was happy with their response after a tough opening half.

"I think our discipline let us down in the first half, but we've been put in situations in this game that we've needed to go forward so I'm really proud of our second-half performance," Monaghan told BBC Sport NI's Orla Bannon.

"We needed to be more physical. We didn't have much ball in the first half, so we needed to keep it.

"And again, just be really clean around the ruck and keep our discipline going forward but I think we really flipped that on it's head in the second half."

Head coach Scott Bemand made 10 changes from the side that fought back to beat Scotland last weekend but there was no heroic comeback this week against the number two ranked side in the world.

With Bemand starting to mould his starting team for their opening World Cup match with Japan in two weeks' time, attention now turns to Monday's squad announcement.

"Everyone that's been involved has gotten us to this point," Monaghan added.

"I wish everyone could get on the plane, but I have to say it's a squad effort and it's tough.

"I think we've become really connected as a group, so it makes that a lot more tough when girls aren't on the plane but hopefully, we can do them proud over there."