END OF THE WORLD: Shane Duffy (r) and Jeff Hendrick show their dejection after the World Cup 2018 play-off thrashing by Denmark at the Aviva Stadium. Photo: SPORTSFILE

DENMARK may draw inspiration from their last trip to Dublin going into tomorrow night’s crucial Euro 2020 qualifier, but I’d encourage Mick McCarthy to use that humiliation to his advantage.

Memories of the 5-1 hammering at the hands of Christian Eriksen and the Danes in November 2017 will have left a lasting scar on the Ireland players who took to the field for that World Cup play-off, and they need to use that pain and anger to set the record straight.

You don't always get a chance in international football to exact revenge on a team that made you look like fools in front of your home fans, but Ireland have an opportunity to do just that and they have to use it as motivation.

There seems to be a lot of negativity around this Ireland squad from certain quarters, but I don't think it's justified heading into this game because Mick has done as well as he could have done with the selection of players he is working with.

Okay, so the defeat in Switzerland last month was disappointing, but they are a decent side and I know for a fact that Mick would have jumped at the chance to be in the position he is in now heading into the final home game with qualification one win away.

The Ireland players need to embrace the moment and make sure they don't play with any fear. Believe in themselves and anything is possible in one 90 minute football match.

Go out there in front of those magnificent fans and believe it is going to be a special night and if we get the rub of the green and play at our best, this is a game we are capable of winning.

We need the Aviva Stadium rocking, we need to get under the skins of the Danish players, and as I can confirm from personal experience, a night at the stadium we used to call Lansdowne Road can inspire players to reach heights many would believe are beyond them.

The Danes haven't changed too much since the 5-1 game a couple of years back and if anything, I'd say they have gone backwards.

One reason why I believe that is the form of their main man Eriksen, who has gone off the boil in a manner that is hard to explain.

The Tottenham squad that reached the Champions League final last June are clearly talented, but something has gone badly wrong at that club in recent weeks and Eriksen is at the heart of their demise.

They have won just three matches in the Premier League all season and are sitting in 14th place, a massive 20 points behind the team they played in the biggest club game of last season. It's truly a shocking fall from grace.

Eriksen's disappearance is one of the primary reasons, as he showed with his magnificent hat-trick against Ireland in the World Cup play-off that he had elevated himself into the upper echelons of the game.

Rumours of a big-money move to Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United lingered throughout last summer and I wonder whether the hype went to his head because the Eriksen we have seen this season has been unrecognisable to the slick, majestic performer who extinguished Irish dreams back in 2017.

His contract is up next summer and it looks like he doesn't want to be at Spurs any more, with Pochettino dropping him for a lot of matches this season and Eriksen looking half the player when he has been on the pitch.

While Ireland will still have to respect him, it will be tough for him to flick the switch and look like a world-beater again, and when I look at the Danish team, the boys in green shouldn't be fearful of them.

Our first target has to be a clean sheet and if we do that, we will have a chance to nick the goal to send us through to the European Championship finals next summer.

The beauty of international management is you have plenty of time to consider your options and Mick will have been thinking about this game for a long time, hoping it would be the game that could seal our qualification.

The players he has at his disposal are not equipped to take on Denmark in an all-out attacking game, so I'd expect to see him keep it tight, try and frustrate them and then try to nick a goal or two from set-pieces.

When we qualified for the Euros for the first time back in 1988, it was not all down to brilliant free-flowing football as there were a lot of games where we ground it out and rode our luck at times.

Even though it was an Ireland team loaded with players operating at the top of the old First Division, we still had to find a playing style that made us very competitive at international level and that's the task facing Mick and his coaching staff three decades on.

We only scored 10 goals in our eight qualifying games to make it through to Euro'88, so it wasn't glory, glory football all the way and despite that, the end result was a team that put a smile on the faces of every Ireland fan.

On my regular trips all over our great country, I'm constantly reminded of the joy our achievements under Big Jack brought to so many people, and the players who will play tomorrow night have to appreciate what a privilege it is to wear that green shirt.

This is a chance for a whole new generation of Boys In Green to create a special night and I can't wait to take my seat at the Aviva Stadium to see them make it happen.

Read John Aldridge every week in the Sunday World

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