Megan Connolly is confident the Republic of Ireland's evolution is gathering pace as they look towards Tuesday's friendly against Wales at Tallaght Stadium.
Connolly was excellent against world No 14-ranked Italy in Florence on Friday evening, shielding her back four in a disciplined, deep-lying midfield role. There were plenty of positives to take from the nil-all draw, not least how slick Ireland looked in possession, particularly considering Eileen Gleeson made a number of changes to her starting XI.
They've not been afraid to air a collective desire to play more expansively compared to the rigid, defensive approach under Vera Pauw. Now it's time for Ireland to prove they can achieve big results with a changed style.
"We have players now who can adapt to different formations and obviously the coaching staff feel that us as a group and as players we can progress into this and test higher ranked opponents like we've done in the past," said Connolly.
"It’s kind of making a further step now, keeping another clean sheet in a back four, but push a bit higher and score more goals.
"Not everything is going to go right, but everyone is trying to apply themselves as best they could, and yeah we performed well in this new kind of formation."
Gleeson has six wins and one draw from her seven games to date. The Italians were the best team Ireland have played since last summer's World Cup, but bigger tests lie ahead.
The Euro 2025 qualifiers begin in April, with the Girls in Green set to be housed in a four-team group alongside three of the top 16 teams in Europe.
"There is a lot to build on and I'm proud of everyone."
"I think there is loads we can take [from the Italy game]," added Connolly.
"Watching it you can see we've changed a bit of the formation, we trained at it this week and I think players adapted quite well. It’s always going to be a tough one when, number one, you play a team higher ranking like Italy and number two, you play a different formation.
"And you’ve players coming into the team. I thought Jess Ziu done great after coming back in after ages, she didn’t look like she’d been missing for a while. So yeah, I think everyone put in a good performance, there is a lot to learn from it, there is a lot to build on and I’m proud of everyone."
A big crowd is expected in Tallaght for the Welsh clash, with the FAI hopeful that the current record crowd at the ground [7,633 for the visit of France last July] will be broken.
And Connolly is determined to reward a partisan crowd with another string performance.
"Support has always been behind us and we have our foundation now where we have a good turnout every game," the Bristol City captain said.
"Hopefully we can keep building on that and come Tuesday we're filling that other [newly built North] stand as well.
"There has always been a great group of players in the Irish team, getting bigger and bigger, there is a lot of youth coming through who are very talented and they've been given opportunities to come in and play and stuff, it’s great for us, to have a continuous cycle and to have the support of this team and shows the strength of Irish football to keep progressing and hopefully it continues that way.
"Hopefully younger players continue to progress where they are integrated at a young age and the pool of players becomes bigger and bigger. That can only help us."
