Republic of Ireland Under-17s have qualified for a second successive World Cup after a 7-0 away win over Slovakia sealed their place in Qatar.<\/p>\n
Cork City’s Cillian Murphy struck a first half hat-trick as Ireland secured a massive victory to guarantee a place at November’s World Cup, however Croatia’s 1-1 draw away to Poland meant they secured top spot in the group and a place at this summer’s Euros in Estonia.<\/p>\n
Coming up against the group’s whipping boys, Murphy bagged three goals before the break, with Ryan Sheridan adding another. The rout was completed after the break with Josh Harpur adding a fifth, a Joey Wuna penalty before Desmond Armstrong polished off the victory with a seventh with the clock yet to hit 80 minutes.<\/p>\n
The qualification process doubled as a Euro 2026 qualifier, with Ireland still holding a possibility of reaching the Euros ahead of the final round of games.<\/p>\n
A 3-0 win over Poland in Wednesday’s group opener put Ireland in a strong position, however the Croatians took control of the group with a 2-0 win over Mark Connors’ side at the weekend.<\/p>\n
A narrow win for Poland, combined with the lop-sided victory over Slovakia, would have put Ireland into top spot on goal difference and earned a place in Estonia.<\/p>\n
The Poles led for much of the game against Croatia, however an equaliser from Jakov Dedic, who struck a brace against Ireland on Saturday, saw the Croatians take top spot in the group.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Ireland comfortably secured World Cup qualification for the second time. Last year, under manager Colin O’Brien, the Irish Under-17s reached the last-16 phase in their inaugural World Cup appearance, ultimately losing to Switzerland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland Under-17s have qualified for a second successive World Cup after a 7-0 away win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-375183","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\/375183","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=375183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}