Ireland men are one win away from confirming their best showing at a Men\u2019s World Cup after summoning resolve and lashings of circle firepower to cast aside Malaysia 7-4 on Friday in Wavre.<\/p>\n
Johnny Lynch, with only seven previous goals, netted a first-half hat-trick in 16 minutes as a madcap match ended with Ireland equalling their 12th place finishes at the 1978 and 1990 World Cups.<\/p>\n
Returning to the Belfius Hockey Arena less than 24 hours after their agonising defeat to Spain, Ireland put on an energetic show full of running and clinical one-touch passing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels amazing, we put everything out on the pitch [against Spain],\u201d said Lynch. \u201cWe all had one goal but it was impressive to see the team bounce back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lynch struck his hat-trick with a tight reverse, angled stick and tap-in finishes. He was aided by Matthew Nelson, who also netted a brace.<\/p>\n
Nelson’s second goal garnered the best of the match. It came during a spell of four goals in six minutes when a three-way interchange of one-touch passes was finished with Nelson’s tip-in.<\/p>\n
Malaysia continued to rally with Jaime Carr, on his 100th cap, pulling off a huge stick save to his right and stave off a 4-2 scoreline.<\/p>\n
Johnny McKee also netted while a free-flowing encounter, which saw 38 shots on goal, barely left fifth gear in the final quarter. Walker scored a seventh from a clinical forehand.<\/p>\n
Lynch added: \u201cMalaysia are physical and like to counter. There are a few things we need to tighten up, but overall I am proud of the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ireland next play France on Saturday afternoon. Win that and the Green Machine will set up the chance to finish ninth next Friday.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ireland women begin their same quest on Saturday with a first classification game against Scotland (10:30am).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland men are one win away from confirming their best showing at a Men\u2019s World Cup after summoning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-600450","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\/600450","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=600450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}