With the first win of his international career opening the door to semi-final qualification at the Toulon International Festival and Michael Reddy impressing him beyond all expectations on his first start at this level, Don Givens was looking like a man who had started to settle into his new role yesterday.

During a short break on a day of fairly hectic activity for the Ireland management team he admitted that the prospect of continuing his losing sequence with the under-21s had played on his mind over the past day or two as had the thought of trying to motivate his players for a potentially meaningless final group game against Portugal (6.0) this evening.

Thanks to early goals from Reddy and Barry Quinn neither remained a concern after Saturday night's final whistle for not only did Givens get the win he wanted but his players will go out against Portugal this evening knowing that a draw will be enough to see them into the last four of this invitation tournament for the first time.

"I feel my international career has finally started at last now," said Reddy after the match.

"It was great to get the early goal against Ghana and really I know I should have had a few more, but the win was all-important and now we feel we have a great chance to reach the semi-finals."

Ireland's success at underage levels in recent seasons has been built, in no small part, on a combination of teams playing to their strengths and their opposition's weaknesses. On Saturday the recipe again paid off with the Republic capitalising on the previously perceived slowness of the Ghanaians to get going during games as well as their own ability to work hard and produce a neat but simple passing game.

It was a very a different sort of display to the one against the Colombians and nobody can have been more surprised than the Africans whose Head of Delegation, Ade Coker Kobina, had predicted a 3-0 win for his own side on the basis of the opening games. "To be fair," said Ireland's assistant manager Billy Young yesterday, "that might have been fair enough after the way we played".

Instead the Irish flung themselves into the game from the outset, scored in the eighth and 10th minutes thanks to Reddy and Quinn respectively and then proceeded to pass up chances in the sort of quantities that FAI teams at this level have very rarely ever produced.

Reddy himself might have had a couple more while Liam George and Gary Doherty both went close but in the end it mattered little for a fine display by Dean Delaney (Joe Murphy had a bug) meant that his side's lead was kept intact and that the Irish moved within striking distance of the knock-out stages of this event for the first time in five visits.

Tonight's opponents had, as it happens, lent a helping hand. After leading 10-man Colombia 2-0 in the day's earlier game the Portuguese collapsed rather spectacularly late on.

Having pulled one goal back in the closing stages the South Americans missed a penalty but then grabbed an equaliser from a free - as it turned out it was the very last kick of the match.

"We couldn't have asked for any more," said Givens yesterday, "either in terms of the attitude of performance of our lads or the result in the other match. The thing now is to build on the win and get into the semis which will still be difficult but certainly not beyond us."

The Portuguese can still leapfrog Ireland and progress themselves if they win this evening in La Seyne but despite such a disappointing start on Thursday there was a good deal of optimism within the Irish camp that the team could get at least the draw they need from their rivals in the next under-21 European Championships qualifying stages.

If everybody is fit then the reinstatement of Murphy for Delaney would probably be as much tinkering as Givens would allow himself but the Tranmere goalkeeper is under the weather and is far from certain to return.

Gary Doherty, after repeated blows to the face in Saturday's game left him looking like an unsuccessful prize-fighter, is also a worry as are Barry Ferguson (ankle) and George (back).

With a bit of a buzz starting to develop within the camp, though, nobody is underestimating their powers of recuperation.

Republic of Ireland: Delaney (Everton); O'Halloran (Cork City), O'Shea (Manchester United), Ferguson (Coventry City), Clarke (Stoke City); Partridge (Liverpool), B Quinn (Coventry City), O'Connor (Stoke City), A Quinn (Sheffield Wednesday); Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur), Reddy (Sunderland). Subs: George (Luton Town) for Reddy (58 mins), Barrett (Arsenal) for Doherty (70 mins), McGrath (Aston Villa) for A Quinn (77 mins).

GHANA: Banahene; Donkor, Iddrisu, Inusah, Kainya; Atiku, Asante, Addo, Taylor; Afriyea, Gyan.

Referee: T Yoshida (Japan).