The sides had played out a 1-1 draw on Wednesday<\/a>, but Ireland were easily the better side this time around as they took victory.<\/p>\nA goal from Emily Kealy, her first in a green shirt, broke the deadlock. Niamh Carey’s sublime reverse stick strike doubled the lead in the third quarter before Sarah McAuley added a third, deflecting in a penalty corner.<\/p>\n
A late Spain goal gave them a brief glimmer of hope, but Ireland quelled any hopes of a comeback to secure a crucial three points in their bid to remain in the FIH Hockey Pro League next season.<\/p>\n
After Aisling Utri won a penalty corner for Ireland, a scramble followed and Kealy reacted quickest to nudge the ball into the net as she opened her international account.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s second goal came after Ellen Curran took a quick free-hit, dribbled past two players and passed to Niamh Carey who found the net.<\/p>\n
It was soon 3-0. Michelle Carey won a penalty corner from which Roisin Upton flicked at goal, finding McAuley who deflected over Spain goalkeeper Clara Perez.<\/p>\n
Spain withdrew their goalkeeper from the off in the final quarter, allowing them an extra outfield player as they searched for a way back into the tie and with just over six minutes remaining, they found a way through with Lucia Giminez reacting well to net.<\/p>\n
The victory sees Ireland climb to sixth in the FIH Hockey Pro League standings and put some distance between them and Australia at the bottom of the table.<\/p>\n
Ireland will now turn their attention to Berlin where they will play their remaining matches, facing Germany and China, starting on Tuesday, 23 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland 3-1 Spain Ireland rounded off their penultimate FIH Hockey Pro League stage with a 3-1 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-506581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506581","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=506581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}