The Ireland women’s hockey side suffered a 2-1 defeat to World No. 3 ranked Belgium on their FIH Pro League debut in Abbotstown this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Ireland were always going to be under pressure in this game and thats the way it played out with chances for the home side at a premium throughout.<\/p>\n
After a scoreless opening quarter, the visitors took the lead midway through the second quarter with Ambre Ballenghien finding the net after a swift-counter that streched the Ireland defence.<\/p>\n
Early in the second half, Belgium got their second goal – this time attacking from deep inside their own half with short clinical passing and again Ballenghien was able to make it count. The Belgian found a pocket of space inside the circle and managed to swivel and shoot past Ireland keeper Lizzie Murphy, who got a hand to the shot but was unable to keep it out.<\/p>\n
The home side played well for the remainder of the game, with both Katie Mullan and captain Sarah Hawkshaw having efforts on goal.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Ireland were rewarded for their efforts inside the final thirty seconds. After forcing a host of short corners, Ellen Curran deflected home a Hannah McLaughlin sweep to send the fans home with something to cheer.<\/p>\n
Ireland play their second game of the tournament tomorrow afternoon against England who also suffered defeat (3-1) to Belgium this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ireland women’s hockey side suffered a 2-1 defeat to World No. 3 ranked Belgium on their FIH…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-185279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}