FOOTBALL: Northern Ireland face Ukraine in second of their World Cup qualifying warm-up friendlies
Republic meeting Andorra
Northern Ireland play the second of their World Cup qualifying friendlies today (Thurday).
Ian Barclough's side meet Ukraine - just four days after a 3-0 win over Malta.
While their opponents are preparing to go to Euro 2020, the fixture will be the last of Northern Ireland's season after their qualifying play-off final defeat to Slovakia in November.
"We're disappointed not to be there,'' Baraclough said. "We think we're good enough to be competing for a chance to be at these tournaments.
"We were seven minutes away from a penalty shoot-out (against Slovakia) and we would have been confident of getting through.
"They're fine margins. It didn't happen for us. We won't watch the Euros with any joy but we want to be there next time.''
A fixture against Andriy Shevchenko's side reminds Northern Ireland what they are missing in more ways than one - it was against Ukraine that they got their only win of Euro 2016 as second-half goals from Gareth McAuley and Niall McGinn secured a famous victory in Lyon five years ago.
Northern Ireland go into the game on the back of Sunday's encouraging 3-0 friendly win over Malta - a result which got Baraclough his first win inside 90 minutes at the 12th attempt.
Notably this end-of-season trip has been Baraclough's first without a competitive fixture, allowing him time to work with his players in a more relaxed way, though he said he had not treated it as such.
"I think the way we attacked these games was that these were two competitive games,'' he said. We came here with objectives to try and fulfil and at the top and bottom of those objectives was to win two games.''
Ukraine, 24th in the world, promise to be much, much tougher than a Malta side ranked 175th and short of match fitness.
"They will obviously be technically better than Malta,'' Baraclough added.
"They've got players playing at a higher level week-in, week-out, and a lot of players are together at two major clubs in Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar Donetsk and that helps if you've got a main body of players who know each other's games."
Elsewhere, today the Republic face Andorra in a friendly.
Stephen Kenny is hoping to finally secure his first win as manager.
The Republic are meeting a side that have won just seven games in their history.
There are six uncapped players in the Irish squad - which has been depleted by injuries.