Irish deserve praise for victory in Poland - Ward

Ward has challenged her team to repeat the result when they host Poland in Dublin on Saturday [Getty Images]

Republic of Ireland manager Carla Ward says she hopes her players "get the praise they deserve" following their 3-2 win over Poland in Gdansk.

After previous defeats by France and the Netherlands, the victory moves the Irish into third place in Group A2 leapfrogging the Poles whom they host in the return fixture on Saturday [15:00 BST].

Early goals from Emily Murphy and Katie McCabe gave them a dream start and although Poland pulled one back just before the break through Tanja Pawollek, a superb strike by Marissa Sheva gave them breathing space.

Ewa Pajor gave Poland hope with 12 minutes to go and while McCabe missed a penalty to make the points safe, the Republic of Ireland held on for a huge win.

"It was well-deserved," Ward told RTE afterwards.

"I think for 90 minutes we were the better team. I think what we tried to do and hurt them in the spaces that we wanted to, we achieved that.

"[I'm] disappointed with the two goals; we'd like to have kept a clean sheet but this group of players deserve an awful lot of credit.

"Three games against three top nations, we've competed in all three, but to turn the result in tonight, away from home in a tricky place to play, they deserve an awful lot of credit."

• Republic of Ireland stun Poland in Gdansk thriller

With third place in the group enough to earn a play-off for next summer's World Cup in Brazil, repeating the victory when the sides meet at the Aviva Stadium this weekend would open a five-point-gap on the Poles with two games remaining.

Ward has challenged her players to do employ a "world-class" mindset to do just that and reach their target of maximum points from this international window.

"I just said to the players, as positive as performance and the three points, we've got to make sure the moment that we get on the bus, that everything that we do between now and then is at an absolute level," the Republic of Ireland boss added.

"We've got to make sure we recover right, we've got to analyse it, we've got to be better. We've got to make sure that every single one of our behaviours is world-class.

"If we can do that, then we've got a chance of going out there and getting three points. We want to take six points from from this window and if we can, then it puts us in a really strong position."