It’s hard to know where to start with that performance against Slovenia. Yes, Carla Ward got the set-up completely wrong, but at some point players need to take responsibility and we saw little of that in the game. Nor did we see much desire or fire in the belly, and that was probably the most disappointing aspect of it all.
True, the warning signs were there against Turkey on Friday, but I partly wrote that off, putting it a little bit down to the conditions, to maybe a hangover from the defeat to Wales in the playoffs. And things always take time to gel when a new manager comes in. I hoped for a reaction against Slovenia, instead we got an even worse performance.
It was completely naive thinking that you could, pretty much, play Denise O’Sullivan and Katie McCabe as number 10, along with Amber Barrett, who’s an out and out nine, and two non-wingers who were obviously told to attack as well. Five attackers on the pitch. And most of the time, Ruesha Littlejohn left in midfield by herself.
Maybe Slovenia were underestimated and we just felt we can play that way against lower-ranked teams and beat them. The truth is, we don’t have enough individual talent to underestimate most opposition, even ones ranked below us.
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We got to where we got because, in O’Sullivan and McCabe, we have a couple of world-class players, the rest were brilliant leaders, dogged, spirited, aggressive. We were none of those things on Tuesday. The most worrying thing was that we seemed a bit spineless.
These players aren’t young and they’re all well able to talk the talk in the media. And they keep telling us about the camaraderie in the group. We need to see evidence of that in the shirt, not just when they’re in their tracksuits talking about it off the field. We need to see it in their actions.
Yes, Ward should have made changes much earlier than she did, you could see after 15 minutes we were getting overrun. It was as if it was just about getting our best 11 players on the pitch, but some of them were being played out of position. She made far too many changes to bring Amber Barrett in, especially moving Kyra Carusa out wide. Square peg, round hole. You can’t be doing that. Ward needs to do better.
But the players should have responded to what was happening too. They should have come together after the second goal and said, “right, let’s keep it safe to half-time”. Instead you had Katie roaming around doing whatever she wanted when the team was struggling – at a time like that you need structure, you need to bank up, you need to go back to basics.
And we can talk forever about Ward’s system, whether her players can fit in to it, but regardless of the formation, everyone knows how to track a player, everyone knows how to run. And you have to run yourself into the ground, you have to want it more. We didn’t see enough of that.
Having said on her appointment that she believed this team could qualify for the next World Cup, Ward backtracked on that a bit on Tuesday, probably after the shock of seeing that display. I don’t know that she needs to be speaking publicly like that, it was a reactionary judgment.
She said, too, that the game was “a reality check”, and that it certainly was, but she also talked about us being “in a transition period and building with a younger squad”.
The youngest player to start against Slovenia was Heather Payne. She’s 25 and has 51 caps. The players on that pitch are in their prime, this is not a transition period. Although maybe it should be.
But if you want to call it a transition period, make it one. Blood players from our under-19s, bring in the likes of Lia O’Leary and Ellen Dolan or any of the talented players we have who are in their 20s, who can become the core of this team if you work with them and develop them.
Sometimes I think it’s better to have players who slog it out at underage level and really have to fight their way into the senior set-up. And I see that in so many of our under-19s, they want it, they do everything they can to make the breakthrough, they’re hungry, having people with that attitude can only be a good thing.
But, of course, that all takes time, so Ward – and the FAI – have to decide whether this is, in fact, a transition period with longer-term goals. Are we capable of qualifying for the next World Cup, or are the next Euros the more realistic target?
If the players themselves believe they can qualify for the World Cup, then they have to find something else within them. Because what we saw in Slovenia won’t get us out of the Nations League B, never mind to the World Cup.
If I was a player, I’d be embarrassed by that window, I’d be itching to get back, dying to put it right against Greece next month. You’d hope that this is a turning point for everyone. And that Ward can watch more players, work on that system to make sure the players she has can fit in to it. We have to be mindful of the fact that she’s had less than a week working with the squad, so of course she needs time.
Ward took this job because it offered her a better work-life balance than club management, but she has a whole lot of work to do. There can be no repeat of those performances against Greece, otherwise the pressure will build on her. Apart from getting it right tactically, she needs a team that shows desire, urgency and passion.
