A winnable path remains Ireland’s greatest challenge

It was at Kinsale, of all places, that Ireland discovered the peculiar danger of a winnable battle. For if there’s one thing history has taught since then, it’s that Ireland’s trouble has rarely come from lost causes. They’ve always handled those with a kind of fatalistic flair. The real danger has tended to live in the fights they were actually meant to win – and nowhere was that truth more evident than at Kinsale.

For nine hard years, Hugh O’Neill and Hugh Roe O’Donnell had done the impossible: holding the English crown at arm’s length with perseverance and willpower and just enough chaos to keep the empire at bay. They were outmatched in every measurable way, yet somehow the ground always tilted in their favour. Ireland, as ever, thrived when the odds were rotten.

Then, Spain arrived.

A full fleet. Thousands of soldiers. A superpower sailing over the horizon. And suddenly, for the first time, expectation crept into the Irish camp. It was unfamiliar and as heavy as chainmail. The march south felt like destiny clearing its throat. But at Kinsale the air shifted, the timing frayed, and within an hour the winnable battle had slipped through Irish fingers.

Irish football carries a trace of that same unease. This team, for all its energy and newfound edge, still seems to draw its strength from adversity rather than opportunity. When the stage is grand and the odds aren't favourable, something loosens in them. You saw it against Portugal, when they played like men freed from consequence. You saw it again against Hungary, a night when the underdog mask allowed them to dash the hosts’ World Cup dreams. Give them a mountain and they’ll find footholds where none exist.

But tilt the balance in their favour and the picture warps. Armenia was the proof of that. It was a match wrapped in expectation, the kind of game Ireland were told they should win, and therefore the kind they were destined to complicate. This is a side that thrives in the storm and stumbles in the calm, a team that feels more itself when everything is stacked against them. Ask an Irish team to improvise and they’ll give you opera; ask them to read from a script and they’ll start dropping the pages.

Czechia lives in that awkward middle ground Ireland never quite trusts. They’re not one of the great monoliths whose presence loosens Irish shoulders, but neither are they so modest that Ireland can saunter in and play free. They sit in the grey zone, the place where Ireland’s instincts get muddled. They’re the sort of opponent that demands authority without offering the comfort of underdog status. And that, more than any tactical wrinkle, is what makes this play-off path semi-final treacherous.

Because even in Prague, even against a side ranked above them, Ireland will be expected to perform. And that thin sliver of expectation has a way of turning Irish football inward. The passes become safer, the attacking lines become straighter, the imagination becomes ever so dimmer. Czechia, like any side capable of making it to the play-offs, can feed on caution. So Prague has all the ingredients for the sort of night that gives cardiologists steady work.

But give the side a grand stage, a crowd crackling with nerves, an opponent with immense pedigree, and they’ve shown that they can grow into the occasion rather than shrink from it. It’s why the prospect of a home final against Denmark, a fixture that would rattle most teams, might quietly appeal to this group. Not because Denmark are any kinder than Czechia, but because the scale of the challenge is profound. There’s no awkward middle ground – just a straight contest with a team that knows exactly who it is.

North Macedonia, on the other hand, would be an entirely different kind of evening, the sort that asks Heimir Hallgrímsson’s men to measure themselves, to manage a game, to stay patient. And something in their football still bristles at that kind of instruction. Denmark offers a kind of liberation. North Macedonia offers a puzzle. And if there’s one thing the Republic of Ireland has shown, it’s that they prefer swinging at giants to tiptoeing around tripwires.

But Czechia is not a side to stroll past. Their Euro 2024 group finish suggested a collapse – bottom of the table, one point, the sort of return that gets misfiled under “harmless”. But look a little closer and you see a very different story. Portugal needed a stoppage time escape act to shake them. Turkey also nicked a victory with a winner in stoppage time. Those games lived deep into the final minutes with Czechia still snarling.

Their qualifying form has had the same lopsided pulse. They lost to the Faroe Islands in October, a few days after drawing with a strong Croatia side. They can look shapeless one week and sharp the next – they beat Gibraltar 6-0 earlier this month. But their bad nights tend to come from sloppiness, not fragility. There’s no soft underbelly to poke at, no open wound to exploit. When they’re off, they’re merely dull; when they’re on, they’re immensely difficult to move.

And that’s the real problem for the Republic of Ireland. Czechia don’t offer the clean emotional script Ireland often needs. They’re not a giant to rise against, nor a minnow to sweep aside. They live in the foggy middle – unpredictable, awkward, and exactly the kind of opponent that turns a semi-final into a slow, stubborn argument.

This will be a match that has to be handled with a steady hand and a cool head. That is the real examination for the Irish side. They’ve shown it can rise when the mountain is steep. The question is whether they can rise in a place like Prague when much is expected of them.

Win in Czechia and the shape of the story changes. But first comes the task that has undone plenty of Irish sides before them – meeting responsibility without flinching.

The old lesson still hums as a reminder. The battles the Republic of Ireland expect to survive are often the moments that catch them out. The task ahead is simple – treat the winnable night with the respect of a dangerous one, and let the rest of March take care of itself.