Highly Motivated Shillington Urges Ireland to Start Their World Cup Proper From Here On In

Ireland's most capped player Clare Shillington is hoping Ireland can start their World Cup proper from here on in.

Having suffered two defeats to the top teams in their group, Ireland now face South Africa and Pakistan, two teams they feel they have a more realistic chance to compete with and even beat should they be on their best game.

The highly motivated Shillington, the only Northern born player on the team is looking forward to the next two games, and hoping that Ireland can put in an improved performance and hopefully come away with a win.

Barry Chambers: Clare it's been a difficult start to the competition, two pretty comprehensive defeats?

Clare Shillington: Yeah absolutely. Obviously playing the World Champions yesterday and New Zealand first up, it was always going to be difficult to get a win out of those two. But in a way kind of good to get them out of the way and our competition sort of starts now against teams that we can realistically target.

Barry Chambers: Yes, South Africa and Pakistan, that's two games you feel you've a real chance of winning?

Clare Shillington: Absolutely. You know I don't think we've showed our best against either Australia or New Zealand, but also know that we're not a million miles away from them in some respects.

They just do their basics, repeat them ever time, a lot better than we do. But I think we're closer to Pakistan and South Africa probably than actually we have been in previous tournaments. We played South Africa back in January in Qatar, and Pakistan - we obviously beat Pakistan, but  I really think South Africa are there for the taking.

Barry Chambers: And how does it feel being the only Northern based player in the site, what do you put that down to? I mean why disparity between the regions?

Clare Shillington: For me obviously it goes back a long way, I've lost my Northern accent now anyway. There was no girls cricket available for me when I was living up North. I went to school at Methody. I played Ulster Cricket, but outside of that there was no club cricket available for girls. And my brother played a bit in Waringstown, and they certainly weren't interested in girls playing at that time, which was a shame.

I moved to Dublin because of that, and I'm very lucky for it, I've had a great time playing cricket in Dublin. But I think it is changing, it doesn't bother me the thought that I'm the only Northern based player.

Barry Chambers: You've had a long career, are you still motivated to play? There's a lot of youngsters in the team, does that keep you feeling young?

Clare Shillington: I think it probably makes me feel older, rather than feeling younger. Definitely still motivated. Obviously it's harder body wise just to get up and, like it's a fairly tough schedule, you know, it's day on day off.

We've trained every day since we've got here. So it's two full weeks of training. So just in terms of getting your body ready for a game. That's the hardest bit. But the motivation has never wavered. I think playing in a World Cup is, if you can't get motivated for that, you shouldn't be here.