Rhian Wilkinson's Wales finally fulfil their destiny on nerve-shredding night in Dublin

If Hannah Cain understood the gravity of this moment, she didn’t let it show.

As the 25-year-old stepped up for what was undoubtedly a campaign-defining penalty of generational importance, she was emotionless. Unmoved.

It was at this moment, one felt that this might just be destiny playing out.

Whatever it was, for a brief moment, the 25,000 fans packed into the metallic colosseum of the Aviva Stadium that had previously created a deafening din for much of the evening, were stunned into silence.

When Cain’s low penalty nestled gloriously into the net, the remaining doubters were now facing up to a momentous realisation - this might well be Wales’ time after all.

When Carrie Jones came off the bench to slot in the second, those feelings were sent into the stratosphere.

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of Wales’ women reaching a major tournament was deemed at best implausible. At worst, downright preposterous.

Of course, Anna Patten’s late header had to inject the customary and healthy dose of nerves to make sure this wasn’t too comfortable.

But amid the frantic and nerve-shredding energy of it all, there was an overriding feeling that this was Wales’ moment, and in the face of a typhoon of late Irish pressure, and a wall of noise from the resurgent home crowd, this team stood tall, writing their name in the history books in the process.

Rhian Wilkinson had once again predicted that her side were likely to be in for another battle in the sub-zero temperatures of the Irish capital, and so it proved at times, particularly in a first half Ireland dominated.

Indeed, only the woodwork prevented Ireland from netting what would have been a stunning opener, with Denise O’Sullivan curling a brilliant effort off the crossbar from