Nov 14,2024
Ireland supporters will make the trip to Dublin 4 this evening hoping that the Boys in Green can finally put fears of automatic relegation to bed.
A draw against the Finns would be enough to guarantee third place in the group, while a victory might even give Heimir Hallgrimsson's side a chance of a top-two spot, depending on how things go in Athens later.
If England were to be beaten in Greece, then a victory by three clear goals at Wembley on Sunday would put Ireland into second spot.
Moving away from the dream world and back into a sphere of more achievable goals, a win later would give Ireland a 'double' over a reasonably serious footballing country (sorry Gibraltar) for the first time in seven years.
In the interim period Irish sides have failed to beat some of the giants of the European game twice in the same group, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Luxembourg, and one of our nearest neighbours, Scotland.
Some of the reversals were particularly frustrating.
The points Armenia picked up against Ireland in Yerevan were their only ones they would manage in their campaign, as they lost the other five games - including a 3-2 turnaround in Dublin.
After beating Scotland 3-0 on Lansdowne Road for the zenith of the Kenny era, the Boys in Green then failed to convert an early lead into three points in Glasgow later the same year.
While the 1-0 defeat to Luxembourg was as bad as its gotten for the national side this century, the return fixture was a 3-0 away eight months later.
You have to go back to October 2017 for the last time the Boys in Green managed to beat anyone other than Gibraltar twice in the same group.
Two Daryl Murphy goals helped the then Martin O'Neill-managed side past Moldova 2-0 at the Aviva Stadium, following on from a 3-1 victory in Chisinau 12 months previously, where James McClean had been the man to find the net twice.
Before that, under O'Neill, we also beat Georgia home and away en route to France 2016, an occasion we've all had to dine off since.
Irish sides beating half-decent opposition twice in the same campaign is a rare occurrence to a certain cohort of younger supporters.
The 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign saw Ireland get the better of Kazakhstan and the Faroe Islands in Dublin and Astana and Torshavn respectively; Noel King was in charge by the time the Kazakhs arrived on Lansdowne Road.
On the journey to Euro 2012, which ended up having no Robbie-Brady-in-Lille-esque moment, Armenia, Andorra and Macedonia were taken care of home and away.
It goes without saying, Ireland need to start beating the teams around them if they want to start qualifying - or even threatening to qualify - for major tournaments again. There's a long, long way to go for this group of players, with the potential for relegation to Nations League C later in the year even if they get a result later.
But doing the double over Finland tonight might just be the start of journey towards the next great moment for the national side.
