With the qualifying campaign over, attention now switches to Thursday\u2019s Play-Off draw when Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s side will learn who they will face away from home in the March 26 Semi-Final and who and where they could play in the decider five days later.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland will enter the draw as a Pot Four side, having made it to this stage via their Nations League success last year, and will take on a Pot One nation in the Semi.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Tuesday night\u2019s World Cup qualifiers, Italy, Turkey and Poland looked to be potential opponents, with an encounter at a neutral venue against Ukraine also in the mix, while facing the Republic of Ireland in the Final is a possibility.<\/p>\n
Winning competitive matches on their travels has been an issue for O\u2019Neill\u2019s young guns but Galbraith is unconcerned about that prior to the draw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think it matters. We’ve shown we can be a match for anyone,\u201d stated the Swansea City ace who, as he did in the first four matches of the World Cup qualifying campaign, shone in Monday\u2019s 1-0 home win over Luxembourg having missed last week\u2019s defeat in Slovakia through suspension.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn one-off games, you just want momentum going into them, and I think we can take a bit of momentum from the win over Luxembourg even though there’s a long gap to the Play-Off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look to keep playing how we’ve been playing and we\u2019ll be ready for March when it comes around.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike all the lads, you want to play in big games, which we have done through this campaign, and it will be big being involved in the Play-Offs.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ethan Galbraith<\/p>\n
Galbraith, who was at Manchester United as a youngster, has been exceptional for Northern Ireland over the past year and there is a strong argument to suggest he was the top performer for the country in the World Cup qualifying campaign which ended with victory at Windsor Park in a scrappy affair against Luxembourg, meaning O\u2019Neill\u2019s side finished with nine points and in third in Group A.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was maybe a bit of a scrappy game at times but I thought there were periods when we did well,\u201d said Galbraith about Monday\u2019s win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would have wanted to play a bit better on the ball, though the pitch was quite hard to play on. It was lively. No excuses from us though. We wanted to keep the ball better than we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was an eye-catching performance and winning penalty from Tottenham\u2019s Jamie Donley, who is on loan at Stoke City this season.<\/p>\n
Last term Galbraith and Donley were club mates at Leyton Orient when the latter was playing on loan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was delighted for Jamie to score,\u201d said 24-year-old Galbraith.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I played club football with him when he was on loan with Leyton Orient and I thought he was excellent in the game against Luxembourg.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took the penalty really well and the quality that he has I\u2019ve seen first hand in training and games for a year. I know what he\u2019s capable of and it was a great night for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the qualifying campaign over, attention now switches to Thursday\u2019s Play-Off draw when Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s side will learn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[31133,8543,1144,8538,30649,16,15,1514],"class_list":{"0":"post-578334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-michael-oneill","9":"tag-national-stadium-at-windsor-park","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","12":"tag-steven-beacom","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115570901806639740","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}