Kenny Shiels, the Northern Ireland manager, has a chat with the BBC: “I think 1-0, 2-0 was a bit fair… they weren’t predominantly better than us but they were in the key areas. 2-0 was probably about right.
“You look at the perspective of where we are, and where Austria are, in terms of where they’ve reached in the women’s game, and they’ve one of the best women’s academies in Europe. It’s just a really tough opponent … but the players are gaining experience from these tough games. We’ve got another one coming, and none bigger than England.”
Can they close the gap on the top teams? “I can’t say that. It’s going to take … when you look at where we where, when we came in … we’ve reached this level too soon. Because there’s no way we can transform a team in two years, the way we have done, and take it further than that just immediately. There’s lots of developmental stuff we need to to with the players and the 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds, we’ve got to get them ready to step up into the senior international team.
“Winning the match is important … but I have a priority in my head where, if it looks like we’re not going to win it, let’s give the younger ones some experience, because they’ll be around for a lot of years yet. And we have to try and revisit that as much as we can.”
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Nick Ames is our writer on the scene at St Mary’s. Read his match report here:
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