The road to France will start right here

Forget about everything that has gone before. For us, the World Cup starts tonight and there's absolutely no reason now why it shouldn't extend all the way to France and the finals for Mick McCarthy and his team next summer. We may have struggled a little to get this far, but none of that is really important now. The thing that matters is that, over the closing games of the group stage, the team needed to achieve certain things and they did.

Now McCarthy must lead them through the most important test they have faced in several years. It is a time for old heads and young legs, and it is up to him to strike the right balance. But if he can do that, then our fate is in our hands, because, while the Belgians will be hard to beat, they can - and they know they can - be beaten by an Irish side that achieves its potential.

What Irish sides have been good at, with the exception of the night at Anfield where we were outclassed by the Dutch, is rising to the big occasion.

Traditionally, under Jack Charlton, our success in this area was associated with the long ball game and the running in all areas of the pitch that so consistently denied opposing sides the space in which to work.

Things have moved on a little since then, but we will need the same sort of passion this evening if we are to build for a victory over the two legs. The Belgians are likely to concede a good deal of space to us and look to hit out on the break, so we will have to keep the pressure on them for the entire 90 minutes if they are not to pose a threat.

An early goal for Ireland would be marvellous, because in this sort of tie goals change everything, they make everybody rethink their approach straight away, and Georges Leekens and his team will quickly feel the pressure to get forward themselves if the chance to hold out for a goalless draw slips away from them.

If the Belgians score, however, we will have considerable problems because we are never likely to get too many ourselves and we no longer have the players to go back to Brussels chasing this tie. To go there in a couple of weeks in the hope of killing the game is one thing, but for us to need to cancel out away goals or, worse still, get a result, well, that's quite another. If the Belgians get a goal this evening then it is they who will be firmly in the driving seat for qualification.

Not that that should happen, of course. There is no shortage of players with experience of big games in our squad, and, while the absence of Roy Keane is obviously a blow, we have been as lucky as we could have hoped for with the rest of the panel.

All of our other key players are fit and available, and McCarthy has a number of options to ponder before he announces his team this afternoon.

Given his recent record, seven or eight players look to be certainties to start. Shay Given is likely to be guarded in the centre by Ken Cunningham and Ian Harte, Tony Cascarino and David Connolly should be employed up front and Andy Townsend and Ray Houghton will be in midfield. For a game of this importance, Steve Staunton and Denis Irwin will have to start, which only leaves two places up for grabs.

Jeff Kenna, Gary Kelly, Mark Kennedy, Jason McAteer and Alan McLoughlin appear to be the players involved in the final carve up, but given the McCarthy's tendency to surprise us in the past, there seems little point in trying to call which two of those will get the nod.

What is certain, however, is that the Ireland manager needs to get some genuine width into the side if we are going to test the Belgians. The visitors are well aware of how important Cascarino's height is to us and have selected their defenders accordingly. But even if they give him a good deal of attention, the 35-year-old is very difficult to contain.

If the team can supply him with good ball - not hoofed up from far down the pitch but angled balls from the last third and crosses from behind the defence - then Cascarino should cause the Belgians a good many problems. Even when he doesn't win a ball, he has a tendency to make it difficult for a defender to take it cleanly, so it is important to target him effectively so that he has the opportunity to cause problems.

That means that, if Kennedy plays, McCarthy will need to get a disciplined performance from him and he will have to play out wide on the left where he can run at people and, I hope, get to the line. On the other hand, McCarthy might opt to play Houghton inside slightly, with Gary Kelly given space to run in midfield where he has been doing very well for Leeds over the past few weeks.

We are fortunate that in the Premiership over the past few seasons there has been so many tactical switches at club level that many of our players have become used to playing different roles. There is a greater flexibility than we have had perhaps at any time previously, but the players this evening must know precisely what their part in the plan is and they must stick to it.

They should be helped by the atmosphere. It is the biggest game to be played here for a while and that will undoubtedly make a difference. The crowd is very different for a big game and the players always sense that. As professionals, they know they have to raise their games anyway, but having the crowd behind them as it undoubtedly will be this evening will certainly be a help.

The Belgians will, of course, be looking to raise their game. Their qualifying group performance was highly respectable, with only Holland managing to beat them. And, in the likes of Franky Van Der Elst, Filip De Wilde and Marc Wilmots, they have some experienced players who are capable of having a major influence on the eventual outcome of this tie.

Even so, we should be positive. Whatever happens this evening, the final whistle will only signal the half-way point in the tie. But if we play well, do what we do best and unsettle them from the outset, by 9.15 we could be a good deal further than 50 per cent of the way to the World Cup finals.