Ireland can 'change lives' with play-off victory - Pauw

Vera Pauw says the Republic of Ireland can "change lives" if they make it to next summer's World Cup finals in Australian and New Zealand.

On the eve of arguably the women's team's biggest ever game, Pauw made no effort to play down its significance.

If the Girls in Green beat Scotland at Hampden Park, and either Iceland or Switzerland slip up in their play-offs against Portugal and Wales respectively, Ireland are going to the finals in Australia and New Zealand.

Victory would, at a minimum, guarantee them a spot at February's inter-confederation play-offs where they would be strongly fancied to prevail as one of the highest ranked teams there.

The brain-frying permutations are finally starting to come into focus. Simply put, there's no more room for error; Ireland will have to turn over a good Scotland side on their own patch to keep the dream alive.

'Ultimate goal of elite football is to inspire the next generation' Vera Pauw and Katie McCabe hoping to beat Scotland and change lives The match is live tomorrow night on @RTE2, @RTEplayer and @GameOn2FM #RTEsoccer pic.twitter.com/2nBmDfCCFU

"The ultimate goal of elite football, of international football, is to inspire the next generation," said Pauw.

"That's why we put so much money into a few players, but that is because of developing the whole game all over the world. If we succeed it would change lives."

Captain Katie McCabe stayed with the theme as she added: "For us it's about, obviously going to that first major tournament in our history and what it would do for football in Ireland would be massive. That’s what we want to do. We want to achieve that goal, but we want to also inspire young girls in Ireland, making sure they can dream and hopefully play for Ireland too.

"I’ve