Irish women still in hunt

Republic of Ireland 1 Croatia 0

The Glasgow City forward delighted most of the 1,046 attendance when she pounced in the 93rd minute for her eighth international strike, after Fiona O’Sullivan nodded Stephanie Roche’s left-wing cross back across goal.

“It looked like a goal would never come,” O’Sullivan said. “They were trying everything to waste time but we kept our composure and kept the ball moving. We had three good chances in the first half and the next time, we need to be putting those chances away.”

Croatia showed little ambition with their two full-backs rarely venturing over the halfway line and a tactical rejig by manager Sue Ronan was crucial to Ireland’s winner. Sub Diane Caldwell won a 50/50 ball in midfield with a strong challenge and combined with Ruesha Littlejohn to free Roche, who had been moved to the left wing.

“Diane has tremendous physical presence,” Ronan said. “She lost out with Niamh Fahey coming back but I knew she’d do a job for us. Ruesha’s gone to Norway recently. It’s a big change in her life which has taken a while to get used to. She’s skilful and affected the game.

“We weren’t getting a lot of space in midfield in the first half. Stephanie and Denise were making themselves available for the centre-backs but their runs were a bit straight towards the ball. But Stephanie’s played on the wing for me before and played some quality balls from there. It would have been really disappointing not to get the win, having dominated.”

Ireland head to Moscow for Thursday’s showdown and O’Sullivan knows improvement is required if they’re to reduce the five-point gap in the race for second in the group.

“We have to impose our game. We’re good enough but didn’t perform the last time. We’ll have to up it for this.”

IRELAND: E Byrne; A O’Gorman, L Quinn, N Fahey, K Duggan; D Gorman (D Caldwell, 78), S Roche; S Killeen (R Littlejohn, 66), D O’Sullivan, J A Russell; F O’Sullivan (C Grant, 95).

CROATIA: N Vuk; H Hercigonja-Moulton, K Nevrkla, L Balog, S Zigic; A Petrovic (K Kolar, 45), G Gaiser; I Lojna (V Stvoric, 92), V Baban, M Salek (K Sundov, 75); M Joscak.

Referee: K Radzik-Johan (Poland).