We all thought there’d be a huge bounce for the women’s game in Ireland after last year’s World Cup, that there’d be lots of investment, we’d have our home-based training sessions again, we’d have an under-23 set-up, and so on. None of it has materialised – and it doesn’t look like doing so in the near future.
For that reason, qualifying for Euro 2025 becomes even more important because it will help keep a spotlight on the women’s game, and keep the pressure on those who need to be backing its development.
Malachy Clerkin wrote last weekend about how women’s rugby fell off the radar after the Irish team’s initial success, especially their Grand Slam in 2013, and how there is now a danger that football will experience the same after the failure to capitalise on the World Cup. We just cannot afford for that to happen.
So much is riding on this team, then, they are the flag-bearers for the growth of our game. That’s an unfair pressure on them, but that’s the reality of the situation. It’s because of their success that so many more girls are playing football now, it certainly hasn’t been down to any great investment in the grassroots.
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Getting past Wales and making it to Switzerland next summer is, then, about much more than qualifying for a second successive major tournament, important as that is. For the football community in Ireland it’s about the wider picture, it’s about battling to get our game to the next level.
So these two games against Wales are huge, we’re close to qualifying for our first ever European Championships, which is why I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of a buzz and more marketing around the games. I don’t know why that is, but hopefully if we can get a good result in Cardiff in the first leg, it’ll ramp up before the second next Tuesday.
I’m optimistic about our chances, but a year and a bit into Eileen Gleeson’s time in charge it’s still really hard to tell where we are in terms of our development. That’s because in that time we’ve mainly played teams ranked well above us or much lower than us, rarely ones around our own level. Bar the game against France in Cork, we’ve lost the games we were expected to lose, and won the ones we should have won, but that didn’t tell us a whole lot. What is our personality as a team? We don’t know yet.
It is, though, a mark of our development under Gleeson that we’ve managed the favourites’ tag much better than we have in the past, as we showed in our Nations League group with Northern Ireland, Hungary and Albania – and again in the play-off against Georgia.
Wales, naturally, have passed that tag on to us for these games, although in ranking terms they are just five places below us. But we should be good with that. This perennial underdog thing can only bring you so far. It’s brought us to this point, but this point isn’t enough. We have to continue qualifying for major tournaments. Take confidence from climbing the rankings, go over there with no fear and own that favourites’ tag, rather than letting it be something that can weigh on us.
There’ll be no complacency though, not least after losing 2-0 to Wales in that friendly in Tallaght back in February.
That game is partly irrelevant, because there’ll be plenty of changes in personnel for the play-offs, but it can serve as a reminder that this is a good Welsh side. At 37, Jess Fishlock was by far the best player on the pitch that night, and once they went 2-0 up after 22 minutes we could find no way back.
My overriding memory from that game is that we had huge gaps between midfield and our centre backs, and that cannot happen again.
I think we need to be much more cautious this time. I’m not saying park the bus, but just be solid and feel our way in to the game – we have 180 minutes to get it right, so don’t have it lost in the first 20. I think that will be Gleeson’s message. Start cautiously, then let your quality take over. She might even start with two ‘number sixes’ in midfield, just to give us that security.
The manager is not short of options, which will be a headache for her.
I think if she feels Ruesha Littlejohn is fit enough she’ll go with her because she has that calmness on the ball and she links really well with Denise O’Sullivan. Lily Agg brings a lot of energy and maturity to that midfield, as does Megan Connolly, and Gleeson has a huge grá too for Jessie Stapleton, so she’s another option in both defence and midfield. Decisions, decisions.
In the absence of Louise Quinn and Aoife Mannion, I’d go with Niamh Fahey at the back with Caitlin Hayes and Anna Patten.
No, she hasn’t had a lot of game time with Liverpool this season, but you’d never be nervous about putting her in. She brings more benefits than just her footballing ability, she’s like an on-field coach, I always loved playing with her. She coaches the people in front of her, she brings real leadership and takes some of that responsibility off Katie McCabe and Denise.
It’s a big test for Gleeson. Her contract is up at the end of the campaign and her whole tenure will be judged on these two games rather than anything that went before. If we qualify, she’ll be reappointed. She might even keep the job if we miss out.
But this is huge for her and her future, she needs to produce a really solid game plan and get her selections right. I hope it goes well for her.
A draw wouldn’t be the worst result in the first leg, we’d be confident enough of finishing it off in Dublin. It’s going to be fascinating.
There’ll be an enormous will to have another night like we had in Glasgow when we beat Scotland to qualify for the World Cup. I’ll never forget the exhilaration, it felt like we had turned a corner in women’s football that night. That turned out to be a premature hope, but these flag-bearers can keep the dream alive.
