Ireland 1-2 Belgium<\/p>\n
Ireland’s Women’s World Cup dream is over after a 2-1 defeat to host nation Belgium following a gutsy display in the Belfius Hockey Arena.<\/p>\n
A first-half goal from Charlotte Beggs had the Girls in Green ahead at half-time as Belgium looked somewhat stunned by the challenge presented by the Irish side.<\/p>\n
Beggs finished at the back post following Roisin Upton’s shot from a short corner and it was 1-0 Ireland with two minutes of the first quarter left to play.<\/p>\n
As the second half got underway, Belgium showed renewed purpose and pinned the Irish into their own third of the pitch for that third period – but the goal they wanted never came as top class goalkeeping from Liz Murphy and some backs-to-the-wall defending by the likes of Michelle Carey, Upton and Kate Mullan.<\/p>\n
When the equaliser finally came early in the fourth quarter it was from a predictable source as Charlotte Englebert notched her 36th international goal with a fine finish into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n
A draw was enough for Belgium to qualify through to the knockouts in second place – but they didn’t drop their pace even after Englebert’s equaliser.<\/p>\n
Their persistence paid off in the final minute when Ambre Ballenghein was able to tap home into an empty goal – Ireland having pulled keeper Murphy out of goals as they went in search of a winner of their own – and that was that, a 2-1 win for the home side.<\/p>\n
Ireland must now regroup before Saturday’s consolation phase kicks off. They will now move to Pool H where they will face Scotland and the USA to determine which final ranking match they will play in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland 1-2 Belgium Ireland’s Women’s World Cup dream is over after a 2-1 defeat to host nation Belgium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-599781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599781","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=599781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}