Megan Campbell: Past Sweden experiences will stand to Ireland

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