Belgium it is for Ireland in October’s Nations League playoffs. They’re a team you wouldn’t be intimidated by, but you definitely need to respect them.
They had a mixed bag of results and performances in a really tough League A group, some of which were poor while others were excellent. Their stand-out result was beating England at home. It is, then, hard to know what to expect from them.
Instead of picking out their 5-0 defeat away to England and taking heart from it, it’s much more important that we analyse how Ireland lost 4-0 away to Slovenia and learn from it.
Yes, we won our other five group games, but that’s the result that stands out.
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It was a tough time for Carla Ward to come in. There had been no end of upheaval and disappointment before she arrived, not least with the defeat to Wales in the Euro 2025 playoffs and the subsequent departures of Eileen Gleeson and Colin Healy.
Add in the retirements of Niamh Fahey, Louise Quinn, Diane Caldwell and Julie-Ann Russell – four leaders gone from the dressingroom and the pitch – and it was always going to be a challenge. There was also no getting away from Ward’s own lack of experience at international level.
But my worry throughout our League B campaign was the lack of balance between the Carla Ward way and the Irish way.
It’s all very well wanting a more adventurous attacking style, but it was our defensive strength and resoluteness that ultimately got us to the World Cup. We can’t lose that. We can’t afford to.
It’s not that she has reinvented the wheel with her preferred 4-4-2 system as all of our players have played it at some stage from underage up. But the effort to improve us going forward can’t be done at the expense of us being defensively sound. That’s the balance that has to be found.
Maybe she underestimated Slovenia and overestimated us when we played them in February, but she went gung-ho, with too many attacking players on the pitch, some out of position. It just looked disjointed. We were torn apart. And that was the result that cost us top spot in the group.
We were hearing too much about how it was a great job for her work-life balance
She didn’t quite know her team then and you’d hope she does now. But when you don’t know your team, you need to err on the side of caution. I hope she’s learned from that. We should certainly err on the side of caution against Belgium. They’ve been playing at a higher level than us recently and will have a Euro 2025 campaign behind them by the time we meet in October, so their intensity is going to be high.
I didn’t see any intensity from Ireland until that first half in Cork against Slovenia on Tuesday, in our final group game. By that stage, my concern had grown about how this team was shaping up.
But there was real improvement that evening. We were excellent: back to basics, direct, strong, quick, playing for each other, taking responsibility. I thought it was all there – except we still didn’t have the finishing.
I wondered if that performance was an emotional reaction from the players to it being Louise Quinn’s last game for Ireland, although I’d prefer to think that it was down to work done with Ward in training, having reviewed the team’s struggles in the campaign until then.
Either way, it was heartening after a less-than-stirring start to her time in charge. I think she started off with too much of a “nice” approach to it all. We were hearing too much about how it was a great job for her work-life balance and how she loves the Irish way, the grit and determination. But sometimes you have to coax that out of the players too, especially when they had taken such a confidence hit from their defeat by Wales. I don’t think that was addressed.
The key for me is that she learns she has to bend a little bit on the Carla Ward way in favour of the Irish way until we’re a bit more settled. It’s all still a work in progress, I’m not sure she even knows her best starting 11 yet.
And there’s still scope for change on the player front. She has talked about the scouting efforts for new talent. She brought in Mel Filis, from the English Championship, in her first squad, and Erin Healy, from the Australian league, in her last, after both of them got their Irish passports. And that’s fine. But both inclusions raised an eyebrow and in the end, neither played. I think you need to be very sure, when you pick these players, that they’ll come in and make an impact.
Otherwise, why not keep an eye on players closer to home? Such as Ellen Molloy, Jess Fitzgerald, Ellen Dolan and Joy Ralph, or any of the players coming through from the under-19s. Bring them in, give them a taste of where they need to get to in terms of making it at professional level. Have a look at them. If you don’t rate them, fine. But give them a chance.
In wider development terms, nothing seems to be working too well. Hannah Dingley left her role as head of women and girls’ football after just a year. There was no impact. In with a whimper, out with a whimper. And the strategic plan that she presented was, to put it mildly, underwhelming.
We need someone in that role who is willing to put a few years and a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it. It needs to be someone who is passionate about the development of the game here. Dingley’s predecessor, Eileen Gleeson, was a great appointment. Would she be willing to take that role again? I don’t know what her relationship is like with the FAI now.
Ward could have done without all that drama, but her focus now has to be on getting past Belgium in the playoffs. It’s been a damp squib of a start for her in this job, but there’s time to get things right. The report card on her and her team, at this point, might say: “Expect more from someone with their ability.”
