{"id":596662,"date":"2026-08-18T04:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/596662\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T04:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:16:08","slug":"ireland-going-out-to-win-against-new-zealand-but-match-is-not-all-or-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/596662\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland &#8216;going out to win&#8217; against New Zealand but match is not &#8216;all or nothing&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ireland women should be calling this World Cup a home from home. Next season, there will be a dozen Green Army players gracing pitches in Belgium\u2019s top club league.<\/p>\n<p>One of those featuring in Ireland women\u2019s next pool match today against world No.10 New Zealand is Sarah McAuley, who plays with Antwerp\u2019s KHC Dragons. \u201cIt\u2019s almost every second week you are playing against someone you know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt\u2019s all French down here, where it&#8217;s Flemish where I am. The girls keep joking that I am the local and I don\u2019t actually have a clue about anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The 24-year-old is certainly in tune with her role, as one of the stand-outs in defence despite an  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/sport\/othersport\/arid-41896963.html\">agonising 3-2 opening defeat to Spain.<\/a>\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Katie Mullan noted after the match that Ireland may have stifled Spain had the match been granted a fifth quarter. McAuley said that with their penalty corner battery beginning to make inroads, their physicality was also coming to the fore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She said: \u201cA fifth quarter would have been great for us. We bank on our penalty corners and see them as a strength.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cAs a Green Army, we also take pride in our defence. We see ourselves as the platform to attack.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">While a majority of the Ireland squad play abroad, New Zealand\u2019s recent funding cuts has seen around a third of the Black Sticks team play overseas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">McAuley has already met one of her new KHC team-mates next season, New Zealand\u2019s Hannah Cotter. She joked: \u201cWe met and burst out laughing as we said to each other \u2018see you after the World Cup, we\u2019re now competitors\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">New Zealand, who play a man-to-man structure, lost 5-2 to co-hosts Belgium in their first group match, while this morning\u2019s clash will see two physical sides go into battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe will match each other quite well,\u201d said McAuley.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe are going out to win but it\u2019s not all or nothing for us. Belgium is a tough match to finish on but we now know them really well and know how to play against them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mullan said that Ireland took \u201chuge confidence\u201d from their second-half showing against Spain as they twice came from behind to level before a late goal denied them points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She added: \u201cIf we can keep building our performance we should have a good day against New Zealand and the group will come together well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">While the squad has been well supported at tournaments in recent years, the men\u2019s and women\u2019s sides believe that there seem to be more general hockey fans who have made the trip to the Belfius Hockey Arena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Hannah McLoughlin said: \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible stadium here and a lot of supporters, and we\u2019ll bring that with us. It\u2019s a new challenge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Meanwhile, Spain take on Belgium in this evening\u2019s later game, which will be another 10,000 sell out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">These two sides are seeded to progress to the next phase. The new format means there will be an advantage with the results against qualified opponents carried over from this group stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland women should be calling this World Cup a home from home. Next season, there will be a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103156,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-596662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-hockey","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596662","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=596662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}