As she stands at one end of the pitch, goalkeeper Jackie Burns has a unique perspective on each Northern Ireland performance.
That is particularly the case in a game like Friday night’s Women’s Euro 2025 Play-Off first leg in Croatia when for long periods throughout the 90 minutes she was a spectator, dealing with the occasional back pass from her defensive colleagues against a team that didn’t offer much going forward.
That role, almost as an on-pitch spectator and observer, means Burns is well placed to analyse and advise and, while she isn’t about to start telling her attacking team mates how to do their job – although as someone who started out as an outfield player that aspect of the game isn’t completely foreign to her – the holistic preparation undertaken by manager Tanya Oxtoby means that everyone is involved in making the team better.
“We just need to do what we’ve been doing. In any game you have to be patient and wait for your opportunities and then be more clinical in the final third, playing the right balls at the right times,” said Burns as she looks ahead to Tuesday’s second leg at Windsor Park, with the score level at 1-1 from Friday’s first meeting.
“Move the ball, move them, look for spaces and capitalise when we can.”
Space was one thing that the Croatian defence didn’t allow Northern Ireland much of in the first game.
The hope is that playing at Windsor Park and its open spaces will be advantageous to Northern Ireland in more ways than it simply being a home match.
While the team hasn’t been huge goal scorers since playing more of their matches at the international venue, the feeling after many games has been that they didn’t make the most of their chances and winning margins could have been more comfortable.
In addition to that, the 0-0 draw against Malta at the start of the campaign didn’t reflect the dominance enjoyed by the home team.
“Coming to Windsor, it’s a big pitch and I would say that’s maybe one thing that is going to help us in the game,” said Burns.
“Each camp we come in and we just seem to get better and better. We are getting into the final details. We even talked after Friday that it’s one of those things where we are getting from a creation phase to a finishing phase, and now we are getting into more of those finishing phase opportunities and that’s something that we need to work on and just be clinical with.
“It’s definitely something where there is progression and positivity within this group.”
Croatia’s penalty, scored by Izabela Lojna who would later put the ball into her own net to level up the tie, is the only time that Burns has been beaten in the last three games.
If she can extend her record of three clean sheets in seven appearances since coming back into the team at the start of Euro 2025 campaign, and her colleagues up front can get things right in front of goal, then a final stage Play-Off awaits and the dream of a second European Championship qualification will remain alive.
“Whenever Croatia were coming forward I was never overly anxious or nervous,” said Burns.
“I just had belief that us as a defensive unit we were going to deal with it and I think that the whole game we showed that.
“It will show in the stats that we dominated them throughout the whole game. Patience and resilience led to the goal. Yes, it was a scrappy goal but, at the end of the day, it has set us up, and for us it’s knowing that we are coming back home now for the second leg and we are just ready to get going again.”