Ireland 1-3 Spain<\/p>\n
A ruthless final quarter from Spain ended Ireland’s World Cup hopes following a 3-1 defeat in Belgium.<\/p>\n
A draw was all Mark Tumilty’s side needed to keep their tournament hopes alive and things looked to be going to plan for long periods.<\/p>\n
But a brace of goals from Marc Reyne in the last quarter against a tiring Irish outfit was enough for the Spanish to leapfrog the Green Machine into second place in Pool C.<\/p>\n
Spain, sixth in the world, knew they had to win to go through and they burst out of the blocks at the Belfius Hockey Arena.<\/p>\n
Their early pressure was rewarded when Nicolas Alvarez poked home the game’s opening goal after nine minutes, although Tumilty would have been frustrated with how his team let their opponents in.<\/p>\n
The heads didn’t drop, however, and Ireland were regularly probing into the Spanish half.<\/p>\n
And they would draw level early in the second quarter after a technical foul led to a penalty stroke, which Lee Cole superbly dispatched.<\/p>\n
Ireland, ninth in the world rankings, were the match of their illustrious opponents, controlling possession, and offering plenty going forward.<\/p>\n
They were arguably the better team in the third quarter and knew that they simply needed to hold on to make sure of a spot in the top eight.<\/p>\n
Alas, it wasn’t to be, as Spain upped the ante, and put the Irish under more pressure with a higher press.<\/p>\n
Tumilty’s men looked to be wilting under the strain and they fell behind from a penalty corner, as Reyne reacted quickest in front of goal.<\/p>\n
His second goal a short while later killed off the challenge from Ireland as he finished superbly across Jamie Carr.<\/p>\n
Spain were able to take the sting out of the game from there, and if there was to be another goal, they looked more likely to score.<\/p>\n
But they didn’t need to, and Ireland are now battling for places, with their hopes of making the semi-finals over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland 1-3 Spain A ruthless final quarter from Spain ended Ireland’s World Cup hopes following a 3-1 defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-599418","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\/599418","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=599418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}