Ireland complete Greece double to set up Pairc Uí Chaoimh showdown with Slovenia

All roads are leading to a shootout at Pairc Uí Chaoímh on Tuesday, June 3 after Ireland and Slovenia won on gameday four of six of the Nations League.

Carla Ward’s hopes that the Slovenians would drop their first points of the campaign against Turkey were scotched by a second-half winner and her team remains three points adrift after completing the double over Greece.

Amber Barrett’s ninth minute penalty was added to by an Anna Patten header five minutes after the break at Tallaght but Veatriki Sarri’s reply past her Everton teammate Courtney Brosnan caused anxiety that was hardly expected against the group’s bottom seeds.

An administration error seemed implausible for a squad top-heavy with support staff but that was the reason for Heather Payne’s omission.

She had recovered from the injury which kept her out of Friday’s first match and yet it was academic, for her name wasn’t included on the list of substitutes submitted to Uefa by the pre-match deadline.

Kyra Carusa’s injury facilitated the promotion of Barrett from her role as goalscoring substitute in Crete and she grabbed her ninth international goal when firing Ireland into the ninth minute lead.

Denise O’Sullivan, donning the captain’s armband in place of the suspended Katie McCabe, had been denied a penalty claim after being barged off the ball but the German referee Franziska Wildfeuer soon awarded.

Athanasia Moraitou looked to have curbed Leanne Kiernan’s run with a mistimed tackle outside of the box but the German official deemed the infringement to be on the line of the 18-yard box, pausing momentarily before pointing to the spot.

Barrett assumed penalty duties in McCabe’s absence, and drilled the ball into the bottom corner despite goalkeeper Zoi Nasi guessing correctly by diving to her right.

Instead of that breakthrough acting as a stimulus, Ireland were slow, pedestrian and predictable. The pre-game message was to avoid a repeat of Friday’s first-half lull but outside of the solitary goal, there was scant difference in this rematch.

Clearly, the ploy was to isolate the visiting full-back against Lucy Quinn from the left but just once did she skip past her and that fizzled out with a dinked effort straying wide.

Ward isn’t the latest of several managers to utilise the strength of Megan Campbell’s throw-ins and that source became Ireland’s most potent weapon for the remainder of the half.

Her sweet left foot also poses a threat and, from one of Campbell’s corners, her opposite full-back Aoife Mannion was unable to keep her flicked header on target.

Tyler Toland dragged a shot wide, as did her fellow Donegal native Barrett, but the goalkeeper left the pitch at half-time relieved to have been underworked.

Kiernan’s injury sustained from the penalty incident forced her off at the break, leading Ward to unleash her former Birmingham City player Emily Murphy as a different attacking dimension.

While that didn’t necessarily unfold, Ireland fashioned their second goal through traditional means.

Campbell’s set-piece deliveries were angling closer to the goal and Anna Patten read her pinpoint 50th-minute corner to glance her header inside the six-yard box past the stranded Nasi.

That should have been the cue for Ireland to close out the game, either by solidifying or extending their margin, but they were blunt in the final third.

Limited Greece, without a point, a shot at goal or a corner until the 70th minute, ended up giving Ireland a nervous closing stage.

With 18 minutes left, Maria Paterna's floated cross was only half cleared by Patten to Sarri 20 yards out.

To give her due credit, a piece of trickery created the space to spot the angle and her clean strike nestled into the bottom corner.

Three minutes later and Brosnan was almost embarrassed when left back-peddling as Ioanna Papatheodorou primed to shoot. Had her low drive been more accurate, it might snuck inside the post.

Saoirse Noonan was introduced for her third cap to lead the line and was inches from steering another Campbell corner home in the dying stages.

Ireland could have done with a third after their complacency offered an unlikely route back for the visitors.

Bar a surprise in the penultimate games in late May, Ireland will need to beat Slovenia by five to usurp them for automatic promotion to League A of the next Nations League series.

IRELAND: C Brosnan; A Mannion, J Stapleton, A Patten, M Campbell; T Toland (R Littlejohn 83), M Sheva (C Hayes 89), D O'Sullivan; L Kiernan (E Murphy HT), A Barrett (S Noonan 73), L Quinn (A Larkin 83).

GREECE: Z Nasi; M Palama (De Chatzinkoslaou 84), E Markou, M Paterna, S Ntarzanou (M Gkouni 66); E Saich, A Moraitou (E Kakembouki HT), M Mitkou; I Papatheodorou; A Spyridonidou (S Kongouli HT), V Sarri.

Referee: Franziska Wildfeuer (Germany).

Attendance: 5,879.