The Republic of Ireland may well need to gain four points from their two head-to-heads with Poland next month, according to former international Rachel Graham.
The Girls in Green opened their 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifying campaign with narrow back-to-back defeats to the highest seeds France and the Netherlands last week.
Meanwhile, the Polish managed to earn a 2-2 draw at home to the Dutch last Tuesday to sit one point ahead of Ireland in the group.
It gives the Euro 2025 participants a small but potentially crucial advantage over Ireland in the battle to finish third in the group.
The most vital decider, of course, will be the matches between the sides on 14 and 18 April in Gdansk and at the Aviva Stadium respectively.
Ireland and Poland would then both have fixtures against the French and Dutch in June.
But for now, it’s the Polish who have managed to get something tangible from the first meetings with that pair.
“That’s what we spoke about last week and how important that point could be and unfortunately Poland have got it and we haven’t,” Shelbourne midfielder Graham said on this week’s RTÉ Soccer Podcast as she and former Ireland team-mate Méabh De Búrca reviewed the international window and previewed the upcoming SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division season.
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“Going into these two games (with Poland), you’re probably looking at trying to get four points out of the games.
“Obviously, if you can win the two games you win them but I’d say four points. We really can’t afford to lose one of these games and Poland now have that bit of a cushion where they can probably afford to draw the two games.
“If a game is tight coming towards the end, they might be happy to see it out. So they have that bit of a cushion but they were always the games that we were going to target as the ones we were really going to attack and the ones we were really going to get points from.
“Hopefully we can take the goals that we conceded (against France and the Netherlands) – they’re all avoidable goals and ones we can fix – and sort that for the next camp.
“And we might get more chances. We got great chances against France. If we can create them against France, we can create them against Poland. It’s another thing converting your chances which is what we didn’t do.
“So that’s probably the takeaway now where it’s disappointing we’ve come away with no points. We’ve played really well but the goals we’ve conceded we can really work on and stamp out of our games.”
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