Paul Fennessy reports from Tallaght Stadium

ANNA PATTEN has spoken about how the Irish team have bonded during the latest international window by playing the party game Werewolf.

The Aston Villa star, who headed home the decisive second goal in last night’s 2-1 win over Greece, cited it as an example of the positive culture within the group.

For those unaware, Werewolf is a Russian social deduction game created by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986.

A 2010 article in Wired describes it as a parlour game that became “a tech phenomenon”.

Now, it has seemingly been embraced by the sports world.

“I don’t know if you know the game Werewolf, but we’re playing it literally every night,” she says. 

“It’s kind of like [BBC reality series] The Traitors if anyone watched that. There are villages. It depends on how big the group is. There were six werewolves last night, a few extra players here and there, and a few extra players who have a special role. But basically, if you’re a villager, you want to kill the werewolf. If you’re a werewolf, you pretend you’re a villager and try to kill off all the villagers. And I would say I’m very talented at the game,” she laughs.

“It was all of us pretty much [Monday] night playing. We have a great culture in the camp, and that allows us to feel really comfortable and lead.

“Obviously, we didn’t have Katie [McCabe] this game, but people stepped up, and it was great to see.”

Back-to-back victories over Greece have created a better outlook for the Irish team after the previous international window was marred by a disappointing 4-0 defeat away to Slovenia.

Slowly, the squad are becoming accustomed to new coach Carla Ward’s methods.

“I think [the lack of familiarity] was obvious with the first camp,” adds Patten. “We were working on new things, and they weren’t working. It is hard having quite small periods [to gather during international breaks], but we’ll have a camp in May/June. I think when we come into camp now, we’ll have more of an understanding of what Carla expects from us.

“I think we knew a bit more what to expect with Greece [on Tuesday] and the pressure. We had more solutions as a team. We’re playing at home, which is a massive difference. We used our outlets a bit more.

“We played into what Greece wanted us to do in the first game. We played central passes, and that was a trap where they wanted to come in and win the ball and put us under a lot of pressure. We had outlets in behind; we used them a bit more and created spaces for everyone to get on the ball.”

On the change Ward is overseeing, Patten explained: “There’s this more intense plan to try and want to play and use the ball and keep switching it. It’s going to take time, but that’s something Carla really wants to instill. And as a backline, when we do have the ball in our half, we really want to step up as a team and keep them in their half and have really good pressure on them. So we were probably a bit more aggressive [in this window] in that sense.”