{"id":597602,"date":"2026-08-19T01:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597602\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T01:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:40:12","slug":"tumilty-eyes-special-world-cup-day-for-irish-hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597602\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumilty eyes special World Cup day for Irish hockey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland head coach Mark Tumilty said his players needed cool heads and real steel to beat South Africa and keep alive their hopes of progressing to the second round of the Men’s Hockey World Cup in Belgium and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Having lost their opening Pool C match 3-1 to Australia, Ireland knew they had to beat the South Africans to realistically stay in the hunt for a top-two finish in the four-country pool.<\/p>\n

They did so thanks to a super final quarter, during which they scored three times to run out 4-1 winners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Ireland square up to Spain, with the winners set to join Australia in the next stage of the tournament. A draw could do Ireland thanks to their healthy goal difference.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the women’s team take on Belgium later that evening, as they also aim to progress after their win against New Zealand <\/a>kept them in the mix. It promises to be a blockbuster few hours of action.<\/p>\n

“For Irish hockey, today’s an excellent day. Can we make Thursday an even better day?” Tumilty told RT\u00c9 Sport.<\/p>\n

“If we can get two teams through, it would be great. But I think actually the positives today is two wins, two battling performances.<\/p>\n

“We showed our character within the organisation. So that’s a real positive. But yeah, it’s a credit to the guys, a credit to the staff. They do all the hard work.”<\/p>\n

Tumilty said his players were almost too fired up against South Africa, who took the lead midway through the third quarter.<\/p>\n

Goals from Ben Walker, Lee Cole (2) and Sam Hyland turned the contest on its head.<\/p>\n

\"Sam
\nSam Hyland celebrates his goal<\/p>\n

“It was too frantic up until half-time,” Tumilty added.<\/p>\n

“We got caught up in the emotion of the game. We started even in the second half, and going behind actually probably helped us. We started again, similar to the Australia game, we went behind and we started to probably be a bit more aggressive in our press, we stole a bit more ball and then we were able to play off it.<\/p>\n

“But I think it shows the character of the group to dig that result out. I’m not convinced 12 months ago we would have.<\/p>\n

“We probably come into the tournament thinking about that Spanish game at the end. It’ll be a challenge. We’ve got the utmost respect for Spain, their coaching staff, but can we stay in the game to half-time and then have a real rattle in that second half against them?<\/p>\n

“It’s a massive day with our women winning, our men winning, which brings it to that last game for both of us. I think that’s what we would have asked for coming into the tournament.”<\/p>\n

Player of the match Cole agreed with his head coach’s assessment, but is confident Ireland have the focus and determination to learn quickly from their mistakes.<\/p>\n

“We probably felt a little bit of nerves at times and we got caught a little bit slow out of the blocks,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think once we start to believe that we’re a good team, we go and we give people a real fight. We saw it in the second half against Australia and we saw it in the second half today.<\/p>\n

“Part of me thinks that we need to just keep believing and keep being confident. I feel like the start of the game against Australia and at times today, we probably didn’t believe in ourselves and we ended up on the back foot.<\/p>\n

“It takes a couple of big moments, a big save or a big tackle to then realise that actually we can go and play. So my message to everyone is probably going to be, let’s go out and hit Spain the way we finished today and the way we finished on the game against Australia.”<\/p>\n

Watch Ireland v Spain in the Men’s Hockey World Cup on Thursday from 3.45pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app.<\/p>\n

Watch Ireland v Belgium in the Women’s Hockey World Cup on Thursday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland head coach Mark Tumilty said his players needed cool heads and real steel to beat South Africa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-597602","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\/597602","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=597602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}