FOR anyone in doubt over the standard of football at the Women’s European Championships, they should have tuned in to watch Spain versus Germany on Tuesday night at Brentford Community Stadium.
It was an enthralling spectacle that was settled by two first-half goals from Germany’s Karla Buhl and Alexandra Popp. Style-wise, it was a mirror image of what their male counterparts might produce.
The Spanish women passed the ball brilliantly throughout this Group B clash and were so unlucky not to get on the scoresheet. Their play certainly deserved more than a 2-0 defeat, but they can still progress in the tournament and could easily reverse that result if the sides were to meet again.
The Germans were technical proficient and just that little bit more direct and incisive when they reached the final third of the pitch.
We’ve all heard about the overall development of the women’s game with perhaps many of us not actually sitting down to watch a full match because it doesn’t compare to their male counterparts.
This is an unfair comparison.
Taken on its own merits, there is still so much to admire in the games on our television screens most nights, and they’ll get even better once the competition reaches the knock-out stages.
The Northern Ireland women’s team are already out of the tournament after losing their opening two group games to Norway [4-1] and Austria [2-0] and will face an almighty siege at St Mary’s tonight against host nation England in what is a dead-rubber.
The North have already lost a pair of World Cup qualifiers to the English on a 9-0 aggregate score-line where Kenny Shiels’ side finished in a commendable third place, but thus missing out on next year’s finals in New Zealand.
Tonight in Southampton will be an exercise in damage limitation for them, with the hope that England will weaken their starting line-up and won’t go too hard for goals.
Anything less than a 4-0 loss will be deemed a good result.
If the North happen to score, they can claim a moral victory.
On the face of it, it all sounds a bit bleak for the Northern Ireland women's team.
But they were always likely to arrive at their first-ever major championships and leave with no points given where they are on their journey compared to the other 15 competing nations.
This is akin to Queen of the South playing Liverpool and Man City every Saturday, or Glentoran playing in Serie A every Sunday, or Larne playing in the Champions League.
Just for the Northern Ireland women's team to qualify for these Euros was one of the greatest sporting triumphs on this island. After losing their opener to Norway last week, Shiels was in thoughtful mood.
He did a good job of articulating the magnitude of the feat in reaching the English finals, if only to inform those casual observers watching the game and who might've been tut-tutting at the errors in the North's performance.
“We have created a monster," Shiels said, “because we have grown too quickly and are playing against teams of this ilk. It's tough.”
He reckoned the squad had travelled in the region of 10 years in the space of three and are competing against fully-fledged, well established full-time opposition.
The IFA, with the help of local government, managed to find the resources to create a six-month, full-time camp for the women's team to help them prepare for the Euros.
With the best of intentions, what Shiels and his coaching staff have been trying to do over at Newforge since the turn of the year was microwave the squad for a tournament that needed to be slow-cooked over many years.
The North’s successes were always going to be wins within games at these Euros – making passes and progressing up the field, being tough to beat and tactically astute, being brave, finding the lung capacity from somewhere to make one more run that might result in stopping a cross or a shot from the opposition.
Caragh Hamilton, who missed the Euros through injury, summed up what life was like before they hit the big time.
“I found it difficult to switch off from work and put my focus into something else,” she said. “I remember in the past sometimes we couldn't put a squad together because people didn't have enough holidays to get away for three or four camps throughout the year.
“You just had to go with who was available at the time, we were sometimes standing in the airport ringing players.”
It is here where former boss Alfie Wylie deserves immense credit. He was the IFA’s one-man band who oversaw the development of the female international teams.
He was manager, assistant manager, physio, mentor, friend, kit washer, from senior right through the youth ranks.
Wylie missed the foam-rolling era over at Newforge - but he single-handedly laid the foundations in more austere times for brighter days.
“It is absolutely crazy to think we are going to the Euros,” captain Marissa Callaghan told me in March.
“I had to pay for my gear last year – we paid to play. And we’re now going to the European Championships, which is the top 16 teams in European football, and we’re in it! It’s incredible.”
It’s not that long ago there were no aspirations, definable pathway or structures for young girls to pursue footballing excellence. And the path is still not straightforward.
But, by reaching the Euros, a “monster” has been created. But what do you do with the “monster” when the Euro party ends?
The vast majority of the North’s players will go back to their day jobs, or resume their education careers and return to being a part-time footballers again.
You can never rule out this lofty summer being one big flash in the pan, with everyone reverting to pursuing mediocrity again.
Or, the various stakeholders – the Irish Premiership clubs, the IFA and local government (whenever the parties re-convene up on the hill) seize this opportunity, build on what these trailblazers have done over the past few seasons, and build a vision around them so that other young female footballers can follow them, and follow their own dreams.
It also requires every parent to share in that dream for their daughters and steadfastly refute the notion that only the boys get to pursue sporting excellence.
The role models are already there, each of them in their own way urging us to think ‘why not’, instead of ‘what if’.
These Euro finals were never about the St Mary's Stadium scoreboard.
They have been about sowing the seeds of imagination among the next generation of young female footballers here.
There’s no greater, no purer victory than that.
