Taking a 6-0 lead in to the second leg of a play-off? You’d be happy enough with that. And that’s the comfy position Eileen Gleeson’s Republic of Ireland charges found themselves in when they welcomed Georgia to Tallaght on Tuesday evening.
The visitors, you’d imagine, weren’t entirely savouring the trip, their most recent appearance there having ended 0-11, taking the aggregate score from their last three meetings with our bunch to 0-26.
But it’s not a lifetime ago that Ireland were in the “developing nation” category themselves and were being trounced 10-0 away to Sweden. So, there was no shortage of humility ahead of the game, not least from Denise O’Sullivan when she had a wander around the pitch and a chat with Tony O’Donoghue.
Mind you, the humility soon dissipated, them being a pair of Rebels. “Tallaght isn’t Cork though, is it,” said Tony, “It’s not Cork, no,” she agreed ruefully.
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Marie Crowe had Karen Duggan and Rianna Jarrett for company in the pitchside studio, and both were content with Gleeson’s team selection, Courtney Brosnan, Jessie Stapleton and Marissa Sheva starters this time around. And best of all, as Tony told us about the pitch, “the going is good to firm”. So no end of galloping and silky passing would abound.
Teams out. There were three English and three American-born players in Ireland’s starting line-up, but no one bellowed Amhrán na bhFiann more loudly than them. As the young one’s sign in the stands read, “Yous are bleedin’ deadly”.
Heimir Hallgrímsson was in attendance, the damp Tallaght evening having the poor man sneezing profusely, him not being used to this weather in balmy Iceland. Then Georgia were caught cold when Julie-Ann Russell scored after just three minutes.
Those close-to four years that Russell disappeared from the international scene – granted one of them was taken up with having Rosie – are beginning to look like lost years for Ireland. She’s been something else since returning.
With such an early breakthrough, Des Curran and Stephanie Zambra worried for Georgia, and how could you not? Never mind “don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington”, don’t put your daughter in the Georgia goal, Mrs Gabunia. Mind you, if it wasn’t for young Tatia, it would have been a whole lot worse.
A half-ish hour later and Des and Stephanie were left purring by Stapleton’s very gorgeous back-flick that set up another goal for Kyra Carusa, and hardly had the celebrations abated when Ireland won a penalty. Which Katie McCabe put over the bar. No matter, 8-0 up on aggregate at half-time and the RTÉ panel was happy.
An heroic attempt, incidentally, was being made to keep an eye on events in Cardiff, where Wales and Slovakia were slugging it out for the right to meet Ireland in the final play-off in November/December, the winners of which will earn themselves a decidedly pleasant trip to Switzerland next July for the European Championships.
But you’d need a PhD in computer science to manually tune yourself in to BBC Wales on this here box, so the Beeb website’s live updates had to do. Goal: Jess Fishlock. The tie all-squared at 2-2. Goal: Jess Fishlock. Disallowed. Goal: Jess Fishlock. Disallowed. The two ruled out in the space of four minutes. If Ireland were having a leisurely evening in Tallaght, Wales were having a hellishly stressful one over in Cardiff.
Second half. 3-0, McCabe. Penalty woes forgotten. And all of it in front of a record Tallaght crowd for a women’s international of 8,745. For a dead rubber of a game on a dank October evening, some going.
Not quite a goal-rush in Tallaght, but it’ll be the Aviva Stadium for the second leg of the play-off final against ... Wales or Slovakia, their tussle going to extra-time. Then, goal: Ceri Holland. Wales through. Ireland qualified for the World Cup by beating their Celtic cousins Scotland. And another set of them stand between them and a place in Euro 2025. It’ll be some Christmas pressie if they can get past them.
