It feels like a wet week ago, but RTÉ’s Marie Crowe reminded us that it’s actually an entire 25 months since that night in Glasgow when Courtney Brosnan, Amber Barrett and their comrades positioned devotees of this Republic of Ireland team a mile or eight above cloud nine. World Cup qualification complete.
Fast forward to this dank late November night and here were another set of Celtic cousins standing between our bunch and their first appearance at the European Championships.
The one blessing this time around is that it’s is a two-leg affair, so if Ireland lost their deposit in Cardiff, they’d at least be able to run again in the Aviva constituency next Tuesday.
If this play-off is of humongous importance to Eileen Gleeson’s crew, it’s probably even more momentous for Wales. After all, they’ve never qualified for a major tournament and for a heap of their senior players, not least Jess Fishlock (37), Kayleigh Barton (36) and Rhiannon Roberts (34), this could be their last dance.
So, when Nick Powell asked Sky Sports News’ Cardiff City Stadium-based reporter Geraint Hughes, who might possibly be Welsh, how big a game this was for the hosts, he could hardly find the words.
To put the progress of the Welsh team in context, he recalled their meeting with Ireland in Newport 13 years ago. “The crowd was 400,” he said, “they’re expecting 20,000 tonight.” In that sense, then, Wales are to 2024 what Ireland were to 2022. Hungry. And on the rise.
Marie had Louise Quinn and Stephanie Zambra for company on the Cardiff touchline, an injury relegating Quinn to onlooker status, her feet intensely itchy as she watched her pals warm up. Confident? Yes. Nervous? Yes. But she liked the look of the team selected by Gleeson, one that contained just five survivors from that 0-2 friendly defeat by Wales earlier this year. So we could discount that, ish.
The main thing was that Ruesha Littlejohn was back, and having Ruesha Littlejohn in the Irish midfield is the equivalent of possessing a footballing comfort blanket.
Anthems. A lusty bellowing of Amhrán na bhFiann, but you know yourself, nothing tops Land of my Fathers, so 1-0 to Wales before a ball was kicked.
Off we went, Des Curran and Méabh De Búrca perfectly happy with the opening spell until Wales only went and scored, Niamh Fahey’s slice falling handily to Lily Woodham and, not to be too over-dramatic, it felt like the sky had fallen in on our footballing world.
But then our Ruesha equalised with her first international goal since April 2016, except the sticklers will no doubt take it away from her because, technically, it was an own goal. A bonkers looping shot from long range, the Welsh goalie gets a decent fingertip to it, it bounces off the crossbar and deflects off her head back in to the goal.
There’s a chance it won’t be nominated for the Puskás award, for the year’s greatest goal, but damn it, if it helps get us to Switzerland, it damn well should be.
Half-time and Louise and Stephanie were upbeat-ish, while still nervous-ish, but the general consensus was that a draw wouldn’t be a calamity, that all could be made right with the world in Dublin on Tuesday.
Second half. Chances for both sides, yes, but neither looked entirely downcast about the game remaining level. Which didn’t make it the greatest sporting spectacle of our time. It might even have had some viewers flicking over to BBC4 for a 1984 showing a Top of the Pops featuring Nik Kershaw and his seminal ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’ tune.
By now you’d be thinking, wouldn’t it be good if Amber Barrett was introduced from the bench, just for old-time play-off-settling sake, and there she was, launching herself on to pitch with a minute of normal time to go, and we had Glasgow lighting up in our eyes all over again.
Not to be. A minute plus added time not ample enough for Amber to do her thing and put us on cloud nine all over again.
1-1. As they say in the trade: finely balanced.
So, on to Tuesday we go for the second leg at the Aviva. First past the post goes to Switzerland next summer.
