Katie McCabe to lead first international women’s side out in Páirc Uí Chaoimh
Now, after the Liam Miller testimonial and two Munster Rugby exhibitions, sporting ecumenism is a matter of life in these parts.
This is a city encased in small-ball fever this week though; there will certainly be larger attendances by the Marina over the next week should Cork end their yawning wait for Liam MacCarthy with a series of weekend events planned here.
And, they whisper, perhaps Monday as well.
Ireland have their own attentions cast beyond tonight’s affair, too.
Eileen Gleeson’s side always knew that they had a Euro 2025 play-off slot banked after their second-tier Nations League autumnal romp through the flotsam of the continent’s middle tier.
Subsequently being drawn amongst three of the top six sides in the world has produced a string of reverses as predictable as their six pre-Christmas successes.
Defeat tonight, against a France side who have already topped the group and are eyeing a home Olympic tournament, would mark a seventh successive reverse.
That would equal the unfortunate mark set by Vera Pauw’s side three years ago.
Back then, Ireland’s feet were being placed for predominantly friendly fire in their attempts to ready an assault on a maiden major tournament.
Growing pains would derive mature gains and so it proved in 2023. These few months have represented a similar sense of a holding pattern; absorbing harsh schoolings while, one hopes, garnering valuable lessons, with a second successive major tournament the ultimate goal.
Their primary task in this qualifying campaign has been rudimentary, a wholly unromantic quest to avoid becoming the lowest common denominator.
By 8pm this evening, barring a Polish upset at home to Iceland, Ireland should have achieved their main aim, or rather avoided an unwanted obstacle.
By not finishing amongst the worst of all the four Group A bottom feeders – they are currently four goals ahead of Poland – they will avoid having to face another of Europe’s leading sides in the second half of the play-offs, the draws for which take place on Friday in Nyon.
In effect, as has been the limit of their ambitions throughout this campaign, they will ultimately seek to guarantee that if they lose, and all logic and form suggests that will once more happen, they do by a minimum margin.
Hardly the stuff of sporting dreams but the vast gulfs in women’s international football must allow for such preposterously incongruous circumstances.
Ireland, although dutifully asserting they go out to win the game, have long since stopped hiding the fact that a low bar is being set for any vaulting ambition.
They will be defined not by what has occurred in these six games, but in their next four.
How they arrive there remains a matter of conjecture. Despite their whirlwind autumn, their ability to retain possession and implement any passing patterns of play have been largely negligible, even allowing for the domination of their superior rivals. And, as has been the case even before the new manager arrived, defensive frailties – freshly evident in the catastrophic Carrow Road opening quarter – continue to mock pretensions that there may have been substantial growth.
That new mum Julie-Ann Russell scored Ireland’s first goal in 2024 was not merely a reflection of an arid attack picture, but also a damning reflection that a player who had not featured in four years should strike first in this barren landscape.
And yet the one true occasion when Gleeson’s side sought to constrain their opponents, rather than restrain them, saw Sweden record the heaviest defeat of an Irish team in four years, a 3-0 reverse in Dublin.
The suppression model has, then, become the default mode; when that does not work, compounded by early concessions in France and England, a reversion to a different philosophy becomes tortuously unsure.
Last Friday, Ireland began with a tactic of stemming the midfield flow from Keira Walsh, who had dominated in Dublin, but the Irish had either not understood the instructions or were unable to apply them.
Yet again, the bench seemed to deploy some gamesmanship midway through the half, Courtney Brosnan’s physio treatment prompting a sideline reshuffle.
Ireland resumed a much tighter outfit; from the hitherto flat middle three sprung Denise O’Sullivan while Niamh Fahey was removed from a calamitous station as a wide defensive option.
More surgery was required at half-time; it is now a recurring theme that the team Ireland start are rarely capable of fulfilling their tasks.
If they were able to apply themselves as competently at the beginning of games as they have been at the end of them, perhaps more encouraging omens may have been forthcoming as the Irish press for a Swiss role.
France are qualified and awaiting the promise of a home Olympics in this preposterous 13-month campaign for the women; but finishing ahead of England will benefit them ahead of the Euro 2025 draw.
Ireland hope to join them there. It would be an encouraging evening were supporters to witness a few more reasons why that should be the case.
