‘Qualification will be earned the hard way’
THERE were heavy showers in Dublin on Friday morning and traffic problems ensured that Vera Pauw arrived a little late to the headquarters of Cadbury. This was unusual. In more than two years covering the Republic of Ireland manager, her press conferences have always started bang on time.
Pauw was in relaxed form when she arrived, though. She knows that this Ireland team are now on the cusp of something extraordinary and historic. While qualifying for their first major tournament feels a natural progression for the way that this team have developed – and would allow Katie McCabe and Denise O’Sullivan to showcase their gifts on the biggest stage – the Dutchwoman has been around long enough to know that ‘deserve’ has nothing to do with elite sport.
Their ticket to Australia and New Zealand will have to be earned. And it will have to be done so the hard way. Away from the home comforts of Tallaght Stadium. The absurd way that UEFA has devised the play-offs means that two of the three seeded teams – Ireland and Iceland – will have to play away from home in their crunch fixture.
The one time that Pauw’s mood darkened slightly on Friday was when discussing the higgledypiggledy manner in which the boffins in Nyon have organised the play-offs. One thing’s for certain: it would not happen in the men’s game.
‘If you have better points, you should have some kind of advantage, but we are being disadvantaged for being better,’ she pointed out. ‘Let’s say Scotland beat Austria, they have two home games with all the revenues, and the advantage of playing at home two times.
‘I would have rather played at home two times, having Bosnia and the second game in Tallaght also. We have the better coefficient but no advantage. It is the same for Portugal, they could play at home twice. I don’t think UEFA will ever do this again. Everyone is complaining about it.’
Having to play in Glasgow or Vienna does seem to put Ireland at a distinct disadvantage, although it is true that their two best performances in this campaign have come away from home – in Helsinki and in Gothenburg where they drew 1-1 with the mighty Swedes.
‘This is a final, like we played against Sweden away and like we played Finland away and also Finland at home. There is no difference in our preparation or how we feel. But what I am talking about here is fair competition.
‘But for us, it doesn’t make any difference if we play at home or away in our performance. I hope that people see that. We play the same way and just step it up for every game. It doesn’t matter if it is at home in a full stadium or away in a full stadium.’
The uncertainty over who their opponents will be leaves Pauw and her staff in a bit of flux. The squad are meeting up in Castleknock this Tuesday and while the manager will watch the Scotland-Austria game with her players, her assistant Tom Elmes will travel to Hampden with two scouts to analyse the opposition, who it will be.
The sense is that there will be something poetic if Pauw returns to Hampden, where she had an office for more than half a decade as she set about lifting up Scottish women’s football. She recalled on Friday when she started with the SFA, there was essentially no infrastructure for the women’s game in the country. She remembered one Scottish Cup final played in a public park with no fans.
‘That is where we were in Scotland back then, this was around 1998, so they were far further back than where we were. We had got stars here when I started, but in Scotland, everybody was starting and the whole team had to grow together.’
Things are different now, Scotland can boast wellknown players like Real Madrid’s Caroline Weir while Austria made it to the quarter-finals of the r e c e n t European Championships, knocking out a heavyweight in Norway. Whatever awaits Ireland on Tuesday week, it won’t be easy.
‘We have to play the best game of our lives, even better than we did before to have a chance in this play-off, regardless of who gets through,’ Pauw declares. Given the journey so far, nobody doubts that they can do that.
It doesn’t make any differnce to our performance if we play at home or away