The Republic of Ireland have qualified for the Under-17 World Cup after a first-half hat-trick from Cork City\u2019s Cillian Murphy inspired them to the huge victory over Slovakia they needed.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Croatia\u2019s 1-1 draw with Poland ended the young Boys in Green\u2019s chance of reaching the 2026 Euros in Estonia, with only the group winners progressing.<\/p>\n
But having finished second in League A Group 7 on six points with a +8 goal difference, Ireland claim one of the four best runners up, therefore earning their place at the World Cup in November in Qatar.<\/p>\n
Managed by Mark Connors, who took over from Colin O\u2019Brien following their World Cup campaign in Doha last year, Ireland knew that they needed a significant victory and a result elsewhere to book their place at both upcoming finals.<\/p>\n
In the end their defeat to the Croatians proved costly as they came from behind in their own clash with Poland to secure top spot.<\/p>\n
But Ireland, to their credit, did their job impressively as goals from Ryan Sheridan, in amongst a treble of excellent finishes from Murphy inside 40 minutes, all but sealed the victory they needed by half-time.<\/p>\n
Not taking anything for granted though, Ireland added further goals in the second period through Josh Harpur, a Joey Wuna penalty and Desmond Armstrong to secure an impressive win that sealed their return to the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republic of Ireland have qualified for the Under-17 World Cup after a first-half hat-trick from Cork City\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25403,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-375003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-city-fc","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375003","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=375003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}