TONIGHT Northern Ireland welcome Portugal to Mourneview Park in the second game of the double header against Portugal.
In Leiria on Friday night the home side were the comfortable 4-0 victors, but there were some positives for Northern Ireland including goalkeeper Jackie Burns superb performance in between the posts.
A victory for Tanya Oxtoby’s (pictured above) side tonight would see them close the gap to group leaders Portugal to just two points and guarantee that Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are currently one point behind in third, don’t leapfrog Northern Ireland.
Here is what Tanya Oxtoby had to say ahead of the match; “We always knew it was going to be tough against Portugal back-to-back, they’re a very good side, but to play away first and then come home in front of our home fans is probably the advantage we need.
“The girls are looking forward to it and ready to put the learnings into place that we have learned from the first game.
“What I would say is we’re disappointed in the way we conceded the goals, they’re really preventable and that’s the positive we took out of the game. We can adapt, adjust and be better in those moments and really make them earn those opportunities.
“It’s going to be tough obviously from a mental point of view with the travel and the heat over in Portugal, but that’s not an excuse from our perspective it’s just trying to manage that so we make sure we make the right rotations in the squad.
“We talk a lot about using the whole squad, I know some coaches talk about it and don’t follow through but we do.
“We talk about starters and finishers and you have to be ready to come on and make an impact in the game. I think you can see from their body language they want to come on and make a difference and prove me wrong.
“That’s the beauty of it, when you come onto the pitch show me that you should be starting or that you can impact the game and our girls certainly do that every single time and it’s a credit to them. Their energy and mentality and what they bring to the game springs the momentum back into our favour.
“The atmosphere we played against in Portugal was brilliant and we want to try replicate that as much as we can here and cause them some problems as well. From our perspective we’re looking forward to playing here and hope to get a big crowd in.”
You can get tickets for the match this evening, kick-off 7pm BST, here – Northern Ireland tickets information (irishfa.com)
