Ireland battled to a 4-1 victory over South Africa in their World Cup clash in Wavre on Tuesday to leave them needing a draw against Spain in Thursday’s final Pool C game to advance to the second phase of the tournament.<\/p>\n
After going behind to a spectacular goal from Kenton Melville in the third quarter, Ben Walker equalised and a pair of Lee Cole penalty corner goals in the final 15 minutes set Ireland on the road to a hard-fought win.<\/p>\n
However, it was Sam Hyland\u2019s effort with 11 seconds remaining that could prove crucial.<\/p>\n
That goal tied the Spanish on points and goal difference, but his strike was Ireland\u2018s fifth of the tournament to Spain\u2019s three, edging the Irish ahead in the tie-breaking scenarios.<\/p>\n
This was not as straightforward a game for Mark Tumilty’s side as the scoreline may suggest.<\/p>\n
Both sides had lost their opening games, Ireland beaten 3-1 by Australia and South Africa losing by the same scoreline to Spain, so this was a must-win.<\/p>\n
The African champions took the game to Ireland but in goalkeeper Jamie Carr, the Irish have one of the best in world hockey and he made a string of significant saves throughout the game.<\/p>\n
He could do nothing about Melville’s opening goal which somehow saw the South African forward contort his body and stick into a position to be able to lift the ball over Carr from close range.<\/p>\n
At this stage, midway through the third quarter, Ireland were struggling but once they found a higher tempo to their game they equalised when Walker scored.<\/p>\n
The pivotal moment of the game came in the opening stages of the final 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Carr was initially penalised for clattering into a South African forward and the umpire awarded a penalty stroke.<\/p>\n
Carr referred it to the video umpire and replays clearly saw that the Irish goalkeeper had made the save before contact with Carlon Mentoor took place.<\/p>\n
The decision was reversed and within seconds Ireland had been awarded a penalty corner at the other end for a South African player being adjudged to deliberately have played the ball over the goal line.<\/p>\n
On another day that decision is given as a deflection but Cole was not going to pass up the opportunity to fire Ireland in front.<\/p>\n
He repeated the trick to make it 3-1 with four minutes remaining but with every goal counting Ireland played to the last 11 seconds and were rewarded when Hyland popped up at the back post to score.<\/p>\n
Even then as time ran out the South Africans forced Carr into one more save to preserve the victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland battled to a 4-1 victory over South Africa in their World Cup clash in Wavre on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-597353","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\/597353","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=597353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}