Ireland picked up a first FIH Hockey Pro League victory over Australia with a 4-1 win in Hobart to close out their second stage of the competition.<\/p>\n
It was a shaky start for the Irish women as they conceded early, but responded brilliantly with Roisin Upton named player of the match thanks to a commanding performance in defence.<\/p>\n
Ireland would seek an immediate response to that early setback by piling on the pressure but Michelle Carey was denied by Zoe Newman, while Sarah Torrans passed up a good opportunity and Caoimhe Perdue’s close-range effort was stopped on the line.<\/p>\n
They continued to press in the second quarter and were eventually rewarded when, from a penalty corner, Ellen Curran deflected Hannah McLoughlin’s slap on goal into the net.<\/p>\n
With Australia receiving two green cards, Ireland sought to take advantage and did so when Katie Mullan finished from Sarah Hawkshaw’s pull back to hit the front at the half.<\/p>\n
Their momentum carried into the second half and from another penalty corner, Sarah Torrans fed Sarah Hawkshaw to finish and a fourth almost arrived soon after but the crossbar came to the rescue for the hosts.<\/p>\n
Australia sought a response with Elizabeth Murphy called into action in the Ireland goal but the two-goal lead remained going into the final period.<\/p>\n
With both sides pressing, Australia were denied a lifeline when a video referral saw a goal chalked off for a foot in the build-up and the issue was put beyond doubt as Hannah McLoughlin finished from a penalty corner as Ireland claimed a famous win.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s focus will now turn to the upcoming World Cup qualifiers in Chile with their opening game against Malaysia on 2 March (18:15 GMT) before facing Japan the following day (18:45) and finishing up against Canada on 5 March (18:15).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland picked up a first FIH Hockey Pro League victory over Australia with a 4-1 win in Hobart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-299456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299456","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=299456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}