World Cup qualifier: Ireland 5 Malaysia 0<\/p>\n
Ireland got their World Cup qualifying campaign off to a winning start in Chile on Monday as three goals in six third-quarter minutes sent them on their way to an emphatic victory over Malaysia.<\/p>\n
It took them 20 minutes to turn their superiority into a lead against a nation eight places below them in the world rankings, but once they did they were rampant. A beautiful opening goal it was too, Katie Mullan deftly deflecting Hannah McLoughlin\u2019s long ball into the circle past the Malaysian goalkeeper. <\/p>\n
Three minutes later it was 2-0 when Caoimhe Perdue converted Ireland\u2019s fifth penalty corner of the game, and Sarah McAuley extended the lead further early in the third quarter with a sublime piece of skill. After expertly controlling an aerial ball, she turned and made her way past two defenders before firing a thunderous reverse strike into the bottom right corner from the edge of the circle. <\/p>\n
Michelle Carey made it 4-0 soon after when she was set up by her twin Niamh, before R\u00f3is\u00edn Upton got Ireland\u2019s fifth when she swept home from a corner. Upton later hit the crossbar from a penalty stroke. <\/p>\n
Next up for Ireland are Japan (6.45pm Irish time on Tuesday) who beat Canada 4-0 in the same pool on Monday. The top three teams in the eight-nation tournament qualify for the World Cup, which will be hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands in August. <\/p>\n
IRELAND: E Murphy, S McAuley, R Upton, H McLoughlin, L Mulcahy, E Curran, C Beggs, M Carey, N Carey, S Torrans, K Mullan. Subs: H Micklem, S Hawkshaw, C Perdue, C Hamill, A Handcock, J McMaster, E Kealy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup qualifier: Ireland 5 Malaysia 0 Ireland got their World Cup qualifying campaign off to a winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11182,103156,150809,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-325508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-action","tag-hockey","tag-hockey-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325508","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=325508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}