Tanya Oxtoby confident Northern Ireland 'heading in the right direction' despite narrow Portugal loss

Manager Tanya Oxtoby declared Northern Ireland ‘heading in the right direction’ despite defeat last night in the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 qualifying group.

It marked a second loss in swift succession to Portugal – but Oxtoby was quick to pick out the positives as Northern Ireland recovered from Friday’s 4-0 away defeat to break the deadlock in Lurgan before falling to a narrow 2-1 reverse.

"I’m pleased...I said to the players I know you’re disappointed we didn’t get the result, as am I, we all want to win,” said the Australia-born manager. "But to put in a performance like that after the result on Friday night is all you can ask for and to do it with such a young group that are willing to take on board everything we’ve been asking for...the goal we scored is everything we’ve been working on.

"We’re heading in the right direction and we go into the next window (July’s fixtures v Malta and Bosnia & Herzegovina) with two massive games that we need to win.

“I was obviously really pleased for the players (at 1-0) because they needed that little bit of confidence. They’ve been so close, so often and so to get it right and really execute it I was really pleased for them.

"We’d been so close in so many moments on Friday so I thought a good start for us was really, really important to build that confidence so we could be a little bit more front-footed and we could really put them under some pressure.”

Oxtoby highlighted the character on show across both games.

"We’ve done really, really well,” she said. "I think even when you look at the resilience shown after conceding the second goal...at that point you could go in your shell but this group, they’re brave and they’re resilient.

"They continue to try the things we’re asking them to do...I thought that we caused problems for them and we were brave in the right moments in possession as well and we’ll continue to get better at that.

“It’s not quite there yet but Portugal are a great side, they counter-pressed really well tonight and put us under all sorts of pressure in terms of when we won the ball and we still managed to get around that at times, so really pleasing.

“There’s more to come...no doubt.”