Billy Mckay believes that by scoring the goals that help save Dundee United he can fulfil his French dream.
The Tangerines striker scored a derby double against Dundee on Sunday his second goal coming in stoppage-time to earn the relegation-threatened Tannadice side what may yet prove to be a precious point.
They still sit seven adrift of second-bottom Kilmarnock, albeit they have a game in hand, as the season goes into an international break.
It was a nice way for Mckay to sign off before joining up with the Northern Ireland squad for their friendlies against Wales on Thursday and Slovenia on Monday.
What the former Inverness frontman would love is for his season to end well for both club and country.
That would mean United somehow staying up and then the Michael O’Neill’s men doing the province proud at the Euro 2016 finals.
“Most of the lads will get a break now but there will be no rest for me as I am on international duty,” said Mckay.
“Hopefully, I can take my own momentum from the derby into the Northern Ireland games after scoring those two goals.
“The ultimate target for me is being in the squad for France in the summer but I have to say I am just really thinking about United and trying to score as many goals for the club as I can.
“I got a couple against Dundee not enough to get us the win, unfortunately but I will take that momentum forward.
“We have Wales on Thursday and then Slovenia on Monday night.
“Obviously, these are exciting times for Northern Ireland and Wales and this will be the first time both of the countries have qualified for a finals at the same time.
“It will be a good game against the Welsh and I am looking forward to it.
“Hopefully, I can get some good minutes out of it.
“We have quite a lean squad this time but I have been in every squad for the qualifying games bar one because I only missed one in the summer.
“I just want to keep scoring for United and hopefully that will help me at international level.”
Looking back on Sunday’s dramatic 2-2 draw, Mckay felt the decision to award a penalty when he was fouled by Dundee keeper Scott Bain was spot-on.
“Of course he took me out,” he said of Bain.
“I don’t know if they had players covering or not as I had been hit over.
“But I got there before him, took the ball around him and he definitely took me out.
“The ref saw it as I red and I haven’t yet seen it back myself.”
He also thought the Tangerines may have deserved more than the point he rescued for them in injury-time.
Mckay added: “I think we were probably the better team overall.
“In the first half they had a game plan to hit us on the counter-attack and they did that very well.
“They scored two goals and we were obviously disappointed about that.
“At half-time and 2-0 down, had you told us we would come back to 2-2 then we would have taken that.
“At the break we would have taken a point all day.
“But I actually feel like we could have won it in the end.
“We even had a good chance at the end where we could have won it.
“I belief if we had gotten the equaliser earlier we would have gone on to win it.
“We will take the positives from the second half and move on.
“Being two down in a derby we had nothing to lose.
“We got the penalty and the sending-off changed the game.
“After that we were the only team in it.”
Mckay and the rest of the Tannadice squad will be aiming to take the positives out of the derby through to the remainder of the campaign.
He said: “As everybody saw, we have good characters in this team and if we keep battling like we did in the second half hopefully we stay up.
“We have the belief.
“I think over the last couple of months the results have been really positive overall.
“We have to keep the momentum going.
“We managed to move another point closer to Kilmarnock so we just have to keep clawing away at them going into the split.
“After that, everyone plays everyone else so if we are within touching distance or even closer we will fancy ourselves.
“We are taking it game by game but we want to be as close as we can be by the split.
“We have the international break now and then our games are Saturday, Tuesday and Saturday (respectively against St Johnstone away, Partick Thistle away and Inverness Caley Thistle home)
“That is a great chance to pick up points.
“We will go away and refresh ourselves because we have had a heavy schedule and then we’ll be raring to go.”