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GOOD
EVENING
We last faced our friends from Baku in the World
Cup 2014 qualifying campaign and only picked up
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leg in November 2012 with a 96th minute free-kick
to equalise).
Michael and the squad will, of course, want to do
much better this time.
This game comes at an important time in the
campaign with both sides having started well,
particularly Azerbaijan who sit in second place at
the moment with seven points. However, as I’m
sure everyone reading this programme knows, a
win for Northern Ireland tonight will take us into
second place over the Christmas period and that’s
what we will be looking to achieve.
Last month we formally opened the National
Football Stadium and what a night it was. FIFA
President Gianni Infantino and Dutch legend Marco
Van Basten were with us for the opening, as were
the First and Deputy First Ministers, Arlene Foster
and Martin McGuinness.
The attendance of 18,234 was the biggest here
for some 28 years and it will be matched again
tonight; all single match tickets for the Azerbaijan
game were sold less than an hour after being made
available.
Sometimes people worry that the atmosphere
is lost in new or redeveloped stadia, but it was
very clear that this is an issue we will not have to
worry about here. Supporters on all four sides of
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Marino match.
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Obviously the key matter on the night of the stadium
opening was the game itself and it turned out to be
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needed.
The new stadium itself has already picked up a
couple of awards (as have we at the Irish Football
Association recently in respect of our marketing and
communications campaigns) and I will touch on
these more in my programme notes for the Croatia
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Finally for tonight I would like to say thank you and
well done to everyone who was involved in the
Women’s International Cup which we staged in
Northern Ireland last month as a precursor to the
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England (who carried off the trophy), France and the
USA were our opponents, none of whom rank less
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series of solid performances which will hold them in
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Ireland v USA, we saw a crowd of well over a
thousand which is tremendous for an under-age
game and indicates the latent interest is there.
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and we look forward to more of the same in 2017.
Enjoy the game tonight!.
Patrick Nelson
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