Ireland manager Vera Pauw felt her side made a "huge jump" with their level of performance in the 1-0 defeat to the USA in St Louis.
Alana Cook's 43rd minute goal, which came following a mistake by Ireland goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan, gave the world champions their second friendly victory over Pauw's side in three days.
"Every game we have our best game ever, I’m so proud of that," Pauw told RTÉ.
"We step up and step and step up and we’ve made a huge jump here.
"I’ve said before the camp we need this kind of resistance because without resistance you cannot push yourself. If this is 100 per cent, you cannot push yourself and today it was 120 per cent compared to last week.
"They are ranked number one and it hurts so much to lose like this because how many chances did they actually get? Maybe two dangerous situations, that was it in the whole game, against the number one team in the whole world.
"We have had many dangerous situations and we’re just not there yet but that will come, the aggression in front of the goal that will come. We’ve got the whole of June and we will be there in Australia."
HT USA 1-0 Republic of Ireland
Alana Cook's 43rd-minute goal is the difference in St Louis. Follow the second half here https://t.co/vBeeyLUd5N #RTEsoccer pic.twitter.com/LH4zPXav2K— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) April 12, 2023
Pauw described the goal as "unfortunate".
"In the dressing room, we said 'Courtney, you’ve had so many fantastic moments so put this away and go into the second-half’ and it’s to her credit the way she got into the game again," said Pauw.
"It was so unfortunate, getting a goal like that against us. Losing a game 1-0 against an opponent that needs to end up with five defenders to stop us from our strategy to score in the last ten minutes is phenomenal."
11 April 2023; Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan is beaten by the shot of Alana Cook of United States during the women's international friendly match between USA and Republic of Ireland at CITYPARK in St Louis, Missouri, USA. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Brosnan said she was "really disappointed" with the goal but that the error will not deter her from trying to claim crosses in the future.
"I want to do my best for the team," said the 27-year-old.
"It was unlucky but it doesn't take away from the performance from the girls.
"I like claiming crosses. I like to relieve that pressure for the backline. Making one mistake won't keep from trying to keep doing that, trying to help the team.
"We're trying to make steps in the right direction, and that's testing ourselves against high quality opposition, and that means pushing our boundaries.
"We can be really proud of the performance that we put in against the best team in the world. You can see how we've grown from the first to the second game. It just shows that we're making steps in the right direction. It's not the result that we wanted but it's great to see the performance and the hard work from the team."
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