The Irish Football Association’s digital matchday programme for this evening’s FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 qualifier between Northern Ireland and Austria is now live.
The e-programme features Northern Ireland senior women’s team manager Kenny Shiels’ thoughts ahead of the match at Seaview – and his reflections on his side’s brave display against England Women at Wembley on Saturday.
In his Manager’s View column in the programme, he says: “We know it’s going to be another incredibly tough game for us, especially following our exertions against England at the weekend.
“Austria, like England, have a 100% record so far in European Qualifying Group D and will no doubt want to keep it that way. Their latest success was a 5-0 victory home to Luxembourg on Friday night.
“However, as we showed at Wembley, we have a tremendous spirit and I believe we can upset our more illustrious opponents.
“We were underdogs going in to Saturday’s match and we will be underdogs again this evening.”
While Shiels was proud of how his players defended against the Lionesses, he was disappointed with some technical aspects of their game.
“I felt our ball retention was poor at times and I thought we could have used the ball better. We will be doing everything we can to put that right against Austria – in front of a full house at Seaview,” he says.
The digital programme also contains the squad line-ups for both Northern Ireland Women and Austria Women – plus a welcome to the match from Irish FA President Conrad Kirkwood.
In addition there’s a picture gallery from the game against England and from last month’s match against Latvia, which was staged at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park.
And there’s also a picture gallery featuring fans who enjoyed the Wembley experience at the weekend.
You can view the digital matchday programme here.
