'Not perfect' but Katie McCabe sees promising signs

Katie McCabe says the Republic of Ireland are "not perfect", but the captain took a lot pride in a posiitve four-day period that yielded two UEFA Nations League wins out of two.

The Girls in Green beat Northern Ireland 3-0 at the Aviva Stadium last Saturday and followed that up with a comprehensive 4-0 defeat of Hungary in Budapest on Tuesday night.

It leaves them in good shape in League B Group 1. If Ireland beat Albania home and away in October, they could actually seal promotion to the top-tier League A with two games to spare.

Not that McCabe is looking that far ahead. The Arsenal star lashed in a brilliant strike against the Hungarians and played with her usual mix of aggression and style.

Now she's hoping the team can make such resounding victories a more regular occurrence.

"We're a team developing," she told RTÉ Sport.

"There's young players coming in, it wasn't a perfect performance, the scoreline might look flattering.

"We are obviously happy with the clean sheet and goals scored which will give us confidence, but we know we can tidy up in some areas. I thought we played some nice stuff at times.

"It's about the development of the team. We want to play more attacking football, we want to get higher up and create chances. We're well capable of doing it."

When asked about her goal, which came just seconds after Ireland probably should have been awarded a free-kick, she said: "It was an angry finish I think! The build-up was actually pretty nice, we'd a few nice passes. In terms of the possession, we moved them.

"Then it just fell to me I guess and I hit it - and it obviously hit the back of the net! It was nice to go in comfortable at half-time, tidy up in a few areas and then come back out for the second half."

McCabe had