Megan Campbell is confident the experiences from recent tussles against Sweden will count in the Republic of Ireland's favour when the Euro 2025 qualifying campaign resumes at the end of the month.
The defender, who is getting close to the 50 international caps mark, is hopeful of another call-up to Eileen Gleeson's squad when it is named this week, especially as she enjoys a clean bill of fitness after overcoming injury issues that ultimately prevented her from involvement at the 2023 FIFA World Cup.
The challenge for this Irish playing pool in back-to-back games against World Cup semi-finalists Sweden on 31 May at Aviva Stadium and 4 June at the Friends Arena, Solna is to try and gain the first points of a tough Euro qualifying group following defeats to France and reigning continental champions England in April.
Campbell feels the lessons from crucially drawing against the Swedes in Gothenburg during the World Cup qualifiers as well as a narrow defeat stemming from an unfortunate own goal earlier in that campaign in Tallaght will stand the Girls in Green in good stead.
"I think going into Sweden, we'll have a bit more experience against playing with them because obviously we did that in the last campaign, so we probably have a bit more experiences playing against Sweden," she said.
"We'll be looking to impose our learnings on them but I think the most important thing is that we continue to make progress and strides within our own football and within our own team and our own identity as a team and what we want to get from this campaign."
The 30-year-old also feels many positives can be taken from the performances against the French and English.
"I think you probably saw the progress we made from the France game to the England game. We played against two top opponents, the European champions and a renowned figure in France, who in the summer are going to the Olympics as well," she said.
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"They were never going to be easy games for us and as players we needed to come together and just work on our own game plan, take what we could from those games and unfortunately we couldn't come away with a result in either of them but you could definitely feel the confidence grow as a team going into the second game against England and from the back end of the game too, I think we did have some good chances, turned the game in our favour almost in terms of the attitude we had towards wanting to get a result against them.
"And I think it's a credit to the staff and the players for their commitment and their hard work throughout that camp but also previous camps to get us into a position to compete with the world's best."
The Drogheda native has had a full season of football in the second-tier Championship with a change of scenery after moving to London City Lionesses following an English club career largely spent further north at the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton.
"For me, before joining London City, I needed regular football. I wanted to get back in and around it and obviously be fit again," she said.
"Given the opportunity to go to London City was a no-brainer for me, difficult at the start because I was moving down south where I've never played professionally before, so that was different and an adjustment definitely but obviously the girls helped massively with that and being in and around a good group of girls, a good team.
"For us at the time, when I came in it was about staying in the league because the new owner Michelle Kang had come in and had a project in place to change things and obviously with ambitions of being in the WSL.
"In order to do so we needed to make sure we stayed in that league, so it was stressful definitely a situation I've been in before with football teams, so it was nice to be able to step up as a more experienced player and to help the team through that phase basically and get us safe going into next season."
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