DONEGAL\u2019S Luke Witherow was part of the Ireland hockey squad that claimed their first World Cup group stage victory in 48 years on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Ireland men\u2019s hockey team took on South Africa in their second World Cup group game on Tuesday afternoon where they secured a superb 4-1 victory.<\/p>\n
Having lost out to Australia in their group opener, Ireland were under pressure to deliver a result.<\/p>\n
But they managed to provide the performance required to keep their hopes of reaching the next round alive.<\/p>\n
Convoy native Luke Witherow is part of the Ireland hockey squad for the World Cup and he was amongst the substitutes for the victory over South Africa.<\/p>\n
South Africa hit the front in the third quarter of this encounter but four goals courtesy of Lee Cole (2), Ben Walker and Sam Hyland secured a brilliant three-goal win.<\/p>\n
Speaking to RT\u00c9 Sport after the match, Ireland Head Coach Mark Tumility said his side showed huge character to record a win on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Witherow and his teammates now face Spain in their last group game on Thursday, with a draw being enough to secure their progression to the next stage of the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was too frantic up until half-time,\u201d said Tumilty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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
\u201cBut I think it shows the character of the group to dig that result out. I\u2019m not convinced 12 months ago we would have.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe probably came into the tournament thinking about that Spanish game at the end. It\u2019ll be a challenge. We\u2019ve 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
\u201cIt\u2019s a massive day with our women winning, our men winning, which brings it to that last game for both of us. I think that\u2019s what we would have asked for coming into the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DONEGAL\u2019S Luke Witherow was part of the Ireland hockey squad that claimed their first World Cup group stage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-598400","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\/598400","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=598400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}