When you have done something once, there is always the belief that the achievement can be repeated, no matter how hard it was or how long ago.
Thirteen years previously, the Northern Ireland Women’s team achieved what is widely considered the biggest one-off result in their history. Taking the scalp of a team that was a European Championship Semi-Finalist just a couple of years earlier sent shock waves around the continent.
The team on the end of that surprise result was Norway when Kirsty McGuinness, Ashley Hutton and Rachel Furness scored the goals in a wonderful 3-1 win under former manager Alfie Wylie.
Norway went on to finish second at the Women’s Euro 2013 Finals, and now the same opponents stand in the way of Northern Ireland and a second successive Euros, with captain Simone Magill – the only surviving member of the squad – recalling the past as she targets a repeat in the final Play-Off for Women’s Euro 2025 ahead of Friday’s first-leg clash at Inver Park.
“I remember it really well,” says Magill, who played the final 20 minutes as a substitute that night at Mourneview Park.
“I was only 17 at the time and I remember, similar to this game, we were ruled the underdogs, no one expected us to get anything from that game, and I think for us, in the landscape of Northern Ireland women’s football, it was a real historic night.
“We defied all the odds and we came away with a win. If you want to look at underdog stories, that’s one right there that we have done, and that’s the message that we will implement into the group this week, that anything is possible.
“At the time, Norway were ranked one of the top teams in Europe, and where we were at on our journey, it was unheard of. We’d no professional players back then, either, so the fact that we were able to do it then, it should give us our own belief that anything can happen.
“We just approached the game that if we believe we can go and do something, then we will go and do it.
“We got an early goal, and that really instils the belief that we had something to hold on to – and then we went and got another one.
“Those kind of messages are what we have to take into Friday that, yes, the pressure is completely on Norway, no one expects us to come away with anything in this game.”
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Magill isn’t the only player who was in the early stages of her international career back in 2013 and who will again lace up their boots at Inver Park. Norway’s Ballon d’Or Feminin winner Ada Hergerberg made her debut off the bench as a 16-year-old when Norway tried to rescue something from the game, and three-time Champions League winner Caroline Graham Hansen was winning only her second cap.
With almost 100 goals between them at international level, Norway will again lean on their star duo to deliver the goals to send them to another Euro Finals. Magill is cast in the same role for Northern Ireland.
“As a team, we are fully aware that we might not get a lot of chances and that, as a team, we need to be clinical in those moments, we need to be ruthless if we get a sniff, and if we get a set-piece, we have to make absolutely everything count,” she says.
“We know the kind of task that is up ahead and what Norway bring and their strengths, so it is going to be a game that if we get a chance, we know that we have to take it.”
When it comes to goals, Magill, who has 25 for her country, is in form. She scored twice for her club Birmingham City Women on Sunday – ironically past international team-mate Jackie Burns – and taking that form into Northern Ireland’s biggest games since the Euro 2022 Finals is perfectly timed for manager Tanya Oxtoby.
“As a striker, it’s all about confidence,” adds Magill.
“To get off the mark in open play – I had already scored a penalty – and be coming off the back of scoring two goals means confidence is high and, going into the game this week, we might only get one opportunity so, hopefully, that confidence will work in my favour.”