Mantell the England ace as Ireland hit for five

Ireland 1 England 5

Yet, the Irish team came off the pitch knowing they really deserved to get more from the game.

Last year, after their triumph in the Nations Cup in Rome, they were beaten 4-0 by England in a friendly, comprehensively played off the park. Last night they matched them in almost every facet of play, but came off worse due to the fact that England had seven penalty corner chances, scored from four, missed one and won a penalty stroke from the other.

Ireland won just two penalty corners and scored one.

Some people here may point to umpiring inconsistencies, but the Irish camp were having none of that afterwards, simply determined to learn whatever lessons they could from what happened and move on.

England’s talisman was the returning Richard Mantell, who had not played for over year and who missed out on their recent Commonwealth Games campaign to ready himself for their bid to qualify for the World Cup.

Apart from marshalling England from the centre of defence throughout, he was also their penalty corner expert and converted four of the seven chances that came his way.

He missed two and the other hit off Mark Gleghorne on the Irish line and resulted in the penalty stroke with which Ben Hawes beat Mark Ruddle.Ireland’s only goal came from a first-half John Jermyn short corner and they only had one other in the second-half which they blew. However, they did create two clear-cut chances from play courtesy of Timmy Cockram and Mark Gleghorne - two more than the English - but both were brilliantly saved by Jon Ebsworth.

The ‘could haves’ and ‘maybes’ arguments will rationalise that the score could have been quite different, but the reality is that they now have to move on and ready themselves for their second game in Pool A which takes place this evening against Canada who came out of their 0-1 defeat by Pakistan much better than Ireland did against England.

However, there was much for the Irish to take from the game.They matched England technically and were wholehearted in their approach. Mantell’s ability from the short corner moves was the only difference between the teams.

With the score at 2-1 in England’s favour at half-time, there was every reason to believe Ireland would get something out of the game and give themselves a great start to the competition. At that point, watching coach of the Canada team Gene Muller commented that it was really a 0-0 match because neither side had made any mistakes, conceding technical fouls only. But it was to go horribly wrong in the second-half. After Gleghorne had missed a great chance to Ebsworth’s save with two minutes gone, England got their first short corner after five minutes but missed. They got another a minute later and Mantell’s ferocious shot hit the unfortunate Gleghorne and Hawes scored from the resulting stroke.

Even so, it didn’t look disastrous for Ireland and, when Martin Jones was sin-binned, their hopes rose.

But they were not able to take advantage of their numerical advantage and, when Cockram was denied by Ebsworth again, the writing was on the wall.

Mantell then converted short corners on 54 and 59 minutes and what might have been something promising became a nightmare.

IRELAND: M. Ruddle, P. Brown (Capt.), J. Black, S. Butler, M. Irwin, J. Jermyn, G. Shaw, A. Barbour, M. Black, T. Cockram, I. Lewers. Rolling subs: K. Burns, M. Gleghorne, J. Sherriff, D. Hobbs.

ENGLAND: J. Ebsworth, G. Kirkham, R. Alexander, R. Mantell, M. Jones, B. Garrard (Capt.), B. Hawes, B. Middleton, J. Bleby, S. Mantell. Rolling Subs: M. Daly, R. Moore, J. Tindall, B. Marsden.