With Ireland’s goalless draw to Italy in Firenze last Friday coming as Eileen Gleeson’s first match since her appointment on a permanent basis, there are plenty of signs of promise for diehard fans of the Girls in Green as they prepare to host Cymru on Tuesday.

The Azzurre sit ten places ahead of Ireland in the latest FIFA rankings, but it was Gleeson’s side that arguably forced the better chances at a rainy Viola Park – with Leanne Kiernan’s late strike controversially disallowed for an apparent offside infringement.

But for Katie McCabe, Friday’s outing in Italy in front of 1,100 fans came less than a week after Arsenal had set a new Barclays Women’s Super League attendance record – with 60,160 tickets sold as they hosted Manchester United at a sold-out Emirates Stadium.

The versatile Irish international is now keen to replicate those attendance figures with the Girls in Green, telling the media ahead of Tuesday’s match that ‘I want to be selling out Tallaght, [and] I want to be selling out the Aviva in time as well!’

‘Tallaght is obviously our home,’ she explained, ‘we love it there – there’s the new stand. You can always feel the crowd on you, you can hear the chants and the screams whenever we get near goal from all the kids as well!’

Ireland are hoping to set a new record attendance at Tallaght Stadium, with the aforementioned new stand bringing the capacity up to a very respectable 10,000. The previous record at Tallaght sits at 7,632 – although the Girls in Green did defeat Northern Ireland at the Aviva in front of 35,944 fans last September.

More than eight-thousand tickets have already been sold for the Cymru clash – and drawing such a hefty crowd to a friendly fixture with nothing on the line serves to highlight the rapid growth in popularity of the women’s game.

But growing attendances is about sustainability. How do the Girls in Green and the FAI manage increased demand with maintaining the atmosphere that the players have clearly come to love at Tallaght?

McCabe explained in Monday’s press conference that Arsenal ‘have put so much work in, in terms of setting those foundations within the club and marketing it so well.’

That is then seemingly the next challenge for Ireland, who have made it clear that they are aiming to qualify for EURO2025 in Switzerland next summer. Doing so could be the catalyst for consistently larger crowds on the Emerald Isle in future, and is likely to be more influential than any marketing campaign could ever be.

For reference, England first sold out Wembley Stadium in 2019, as they welcomed Germany after reaching the semifinals of the Women’s World Cup in that year. Since then, sellout crowds have become a regular occurrence – especially since the Lionesses were crowned as European Champions in 2022.

But in addition to these showpiece fixtures under the arch, England continue to tour the country – engaging fans from all corners of the nation, albeit in front of smaller crowds. The 2023 UEFA Women’s Nations League saw the Lionesses play in Sunderland and Leicester, before wrapping up their campaign at Wembley Stadium.

The Netherlands adopted a similar strategy too – they played their group stage matches in Utrecht, Nijmegen and Tilburg, with their knockout fixtures played in Heerenveen. Despite not playing in the capital city, the Oranjeleeuwinnen still manage to impressive crowds, so could it work for Ireland too?

Perhaps, but not yet. The Girls in Green must work to consistently attract capacity crowds at Tallaght first – after all, if you can’t find 10,000 fans in Dublin, the chances are that you won’t find them in Cork, Limerick or Galway either.

It will be an incredibly tough balancing act for the FAI though. Unlike England and the Netherlands, the Girls in Green have an established home in Dublin – and a sudden switch to touring the country could spark discontent amongst fans who have flooded through the turnstiles for years.

The FAI’s next moves will be interesting to keep an eye on – but if they can smash their previous attendance record against Cymru on Tuesday, Ireland will edge one step closer to the Aviva sellout that Katie McCabe longs so desperately for.