Ireland international Heather Payne hopes that lessons from a tough run of results against higher-ranked teams will assist Vera Pauw's side when it comes to the World Cup qualification bid later this year.

The Republic are in Reykjavik to play hosts Iceland on Tuesday, the second game of a double header, with Iceland winning 3-2 on Friday.

That made it six defeats in a row for Pauw's side but while Ireland are ranked 34th in the world, their last three friendly defeats have come against teams who are above them: Denmark (16th), Iceland (17th) and Belgium (18th).

"We have been playing opposition ranked higher than us for the last five games so of course that will be a challenge," says Payne, a Roscommon native currently based in the USA.

"We are better off challenging ourselves instead of just getting easy wins. It's disappointing to lose again, our first-half performance just wasn't good enough, we came back out for the second half and scored a few goals, we could even have drawn the game, we had chances, so that's a positive to take.

"It's good to play these games, these are the teams you want to be competing against," she added.

Payne was relieved to finally score her first international goal against Iceland, having drawn a blank in the previous 14 games.

"I feel like it's been a long time coming, from the previous few games, I just feel it's been coming so I just wanted to finally get my first goal, once it's done hopefully I can kick on and get a few more goals, that's what we have been lacking, we haven't really been scoring so I was happy get that first goal," she said.