Northern Ireland's Tanya Oxtoby in 'we need to be brave' call for Republic of Ireland derby

Northern Ireland manager Tanya Oxtoby wants to “finish on a positive” across Tuesday’s derby date with Republic of Ireland at the National Stadium in Belfast.

Victory in front of a Windsor Park crowd expected to pass the 8,000-strong attendance figure would secure Northern Ireland a League A promotion play-off shot from the final fixture of a first-ever UEFA Women’s Nations League campaign.

Oxtoby’s September debut as Northern Ireland boss finished in a 3-0 Dublin defeat to a Republic of Ireland side now in search of cementing a perfect group record.

Under the Australia-born boss, Northern Ireland sit two points clear of Hungary in second entering the closing test and bolstered by Friday’s victory over Albania plus the chance to line out at the National Stadium at Windsor Park.

"We need to challenge ourselves and we need to be brave," said Oxtoby on BBC Sport NI. "From a performance point of view the easy choice would have been to stay at Seaview.

"The only pressure we have is the pressure we put on ourselves...we've taken it one game at a time and asked for a 90-minute performance and we got that in the last game. Now we need to carry that over in a high-pressure circumstance and challenge ourselves in the best of the group.

"We played them first time around and now we are playing them last, so we'll get a good idea of where we are at and the girls are really buzzing for it. You want to play against teams that have quality everywhere...for us then to know where we need to look to exploit and where we need to be better."

Oxtoby highlighted the opportunity for continued progress and “a really good indication of where we are at”.

"We are going to learn a lot about ourselves," said Oxtoby. "The Republic have been far and away the best team in this group, so we will know about the areas where we know we need to improve.

"We want to finish on a positive and we want to continue the momentum from Friday's game because I thought the girls were outstanding. We're talking about the fact we've been waiting for it to click and I felt like it did on Friday so we want to carry that over and push for a positive result."