Judgment Day Eve in Glasgow and the mood is light. If the rest of the Ireland squad are as loose and relaxed as Vera Pauw and Katie McCabe, then tension isn’t going to be the reason they don’t make it to the World Cup. Maybe it turns out that Scotland are simply the better team and if that’s how it, that’s how it will be. But they’re not fretting over the job ahead. Far from it.
“There’s not a weight on my shoulders,” McCabe says. “I feel the support and the love and the backing from the nation. I wouldn’t say it’s a weight necessarily. I think we all know what’s at stake. It’s another game of football at the end of the day.
“For me, we have the identity in how we play. We have a structure and a style that we believe in and that we give 100 per cent with. I think for us, yeah, it might not be the prettiest at times but we understand our jobs and our roles within what that organisation is. And I think having that identity really gives us the confidence to go out and back ourselves in these situations. Yeah, we’ve done it in previous games but that doesn’t mean anything any more. We have to do it again now tomorrow night.”
None of them have played a game of this size before. Niamh Fahey was in the team that lost a playoff against Iceland for the 2008 Euros but that was a different time and a different world and their heartache at not making it through was essentially private grief. They have everyone’s attention this time around — a hefty TV audience, a growing slice of the public hanging on what happens. They aren’t the only ones with skin in the game this time.
“The ultimate goal of elite football, of international football is to inspire the next generation,” says Pauw. “That’s why we put so much money into a few players. But that is because of developing the whole game all over the world. It gives a massive future for girls. If we succeed it would change lives.
“We know where we stand and we know that Scotland is favoured in the game. We know that. I’m not surprised. They went to the European Championships. They went to the World Cup. They are at home and it is their second game at home in a week, they have the crowd behind them. So that sums it all up. It is what it is. We will be absolutely ready in our capacities tomorrow and we will see if it’s good enough. We know where we stand. We are realistic. We are very realistic.”
That realism is no small part of what has carried them to this point. The whole campaign has been a high-wire act, a series of exam papers in which they set the pass mark at a high level and nothing less would do. The stakes are enormous here but if they’re relaxed about it, it’s because they have trained themselves to think that way.
“We have experienced it a few times throughout the campaign,” says McCabe. “Against Finland home and away, Slovakia home and away, Sweden away. They are all massive games and I think having played in those pressure games, where they are must-wins. We are used to it.
“We can’t replicate what is going to happen tomorrow [Tuesday] night but it will be similar to those pressure situations. For us it is about getting our job done early in the week in terms of being tactically prepared, mentally prepared for what is going to come at us tomorrow.
“When it comes to game day you are ready and in the zone to go out and give it 100 per cent for 90-plus minutes.”
They weren’t practising penalties in their final session last night, no morsels thrown to prying eyes. They did that all in Dublin before coming this way. Everything is done, everything is ready. Games like this generally come down to who can keep their heads the best. As with everything else, Pauw is phlegmatic about her charges’ capacities on that score.
“You’ve asked before about was playing against Sweden in front of the crowd a problem and I don’t think anyone has seen anything of that before. It’s about knowing what you can and what you cannot do. And it is building that into team work and then just going for it. We keep it as simple as that. We know the nation is behind us and that everybody is proud of us. We know that we are here now and that whatever we show tomorrow, I know that the nation will be proud of it.”
