There is an element of walking a tightrope to this uniquely challenging European qualification campaign.
How do you reconcile the desire - stemming from World Cup frustrations last year - to break free from the shackles of a conservative past with the reality of playing in a group with three of the best teams in the world?
For Ireland manager Eileen Gleeson, there are a series of questions to answer ahead of tonight’s first of two games against Sweden.
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With around 30,000 fans desperate for something to cheer - after defeats to France and England last month - how do the Girls in Green approach this one?
A repeat of those two performances, minus the mistakes, the concession of early, avoidable goals?
Or a more open approach, similar to the latter stages of last month’s games, when a more clinical edge might have yielded a point or two?
Against the team that finished third in last year’s World Cup, there is no easy answer.
“It is that balancing act,” says Gleeson. “Are you going to go full tilt and chase from the start, are you going to stay in the game as long?
“If you look at all of that, the highest risk chances for both France and England are when we push out, and Courtney (Brosnan) has to make a worldie save that’s happened on a break.
“Despite France completely outnumbering us on shots, they weren’t high risk.
“Longer range, from wide, they weren’t the higher risk ones. The higher risk ones were from when we pushed forward, which makes perfect sense if we’re going to get caught on a break.
“It is that balancing act…”
The desire to be more adventurous is there. But, again, it has to be reconciled with the standard of opposition.
Against England, Gleeson felt Ireland “could have got closer to the ball at more points.”
She asks: “Where’s your line of engagement? When are you going to go after the ball? When are you going to allow them to have it? When are you going to drop?
“It’s making those decisions.
“But I think the girls are ready, physically and mentally, to do that. It’s just choosing the moment.”
Centre-half Caitlin Hayes believes there will be opportunities tonight to get on the front-foot more often and earlier in the game than last month.
“The second half of England, there were plenty of opportunities to be clipped and cut to see what we did well,” says the Celtic defender.
“That’s obviously something that we’ve taken positives from and we’ll take confidence from that, knowing that we can keep the European champions in our pocket for certain elements of our game.
“We’ll certainly be using that and moving forward to Sweden.
“I think ultimately it’s not just the football side, it’s also the mental side in terms of becoming the hunted at the right time and the hunters.
“If you’re in a low block you wait for your opportunity and you maybe wait for a Swedish mistake, pick it off as a pack and move forward together.
“Ultimately, everything is done together, whether we’re in a low block or going for them high, that’s the main thing, that we do that together.
“I think the last couple of games we’ve maybe not been cohesive in terms of the way we’ve decided to go forward or to retreat back.
“I definitely think there’ll be improvements to be made on Friday.”
A result or two against Sweden would go a long way towards smoothing out the path to Euro 2025, with play-off seedings at stake for the League A teams that don’t qualify automatically.
Seven of the eight teams that drop into the play-offs from League A will be seeded in the second round of the play-offs - meaning a likely decider against a team from either League B or C.
After two rounds of games, Ireland are fifth of the eight teams currently occupying play-off places, so avoiding the bottom of that pile will significantly strengthen their prospects.
Asked if she had a minimum points target for this campaign, Gleeson replies: “What we always talk about is qualification for Euro 2025. We talk about this with the players openly.
“Right now we are focusing on the games in the qualifiers, but we understand the importance of the points, we understand the importance of every single goal conceded, every single goal scored in terms of being seeded in the play-off, if it comes to that.
“So that’s an ongoing conversation. This is a moment in the group qualifiers, but it can’t be viewed as an isolated moment.
“If you are talking about goals conceded and how that might impact you being seeded in a play-off place, then we have to factor that into the approach for the game. It’s all intertwined.
“Obviously we want points, we want to win the games. If that isn’t the outcome, how do we still use that outcome to get us to the next point and the next step towards Euro 2025 qualification?”
Does she see Sweden, the lowest ranked of Ireland’s three opponents - albeit sixth in the world! - as the best chance to get some points on the board?
“We see these two games as another top seed,” says Gleeson.
“They are sixth in the world, Olympic runners-up, third in the World Cup, so potentially as we have all spoken about in terms of this group, it’s three top seeds that we are playing.
“So we are not going to underestimate Sweden. We have seen them go toe-to-toe with France and with England.
“They are three top seeds and we will be very respectful of the level of them.”
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