Roman conquest opens the door

VENI, VIDI, VICI! How appropriate it was Rome where Ireland came, saw and conquered in the European Nations Championship on Saturday night.

However, delighted coach Dave Passmore says this is only the first step. By beating the Czech Republic 4-2 in the final, a myriad of doors are now opening, starting next April with the World Cup qualifier in China. The Irish now face a three-year campaign of top class international competition, which could be topped off by hosting the Olympic qualifiers in 2008.

The Irish Hockey Association will know within the next week if it is to be awarded this prestigious tournament, but for the moment Passmore and his players are simply delighted to have secured their participation in it.

Passmore also believes he now has a squad with the talent, self-belief and winning attitude to compete with the best and is relishing travelling to China next year as complete underdogs.

Given the nature of their performance in Rome, there is no reason to disbelieve the coach who struck gold on his first outing with this team.

He has only been in Ireland nine months and directly involved with the team for four, but already they have had a massive impact on the psyche of a sport which has traditionally fought against an ‘elitist’ tag and an almost complete absence of public support.

Indeed, both the men’s and women’s senior teams will next year compete in World Cup qualifying tournaments for the first time, and, after the huge success of the women’s European Championships in Dublin last month, Irish hockey is enjoying its greatest era.

But Passmore feels - like Irish women’s coach, Riet Kuper - that this is only the beginning.

“It is a whole new ball game for hockey now. We cannot rest with what we have achieved and we must consolidate and make Ireland very conscious they have two successful and talented teams.

But the coach knows further success means loosening the purse strings to fund the development of the teams, finding sponsors and developing a whole new generation of players.

“We’ll enjoy this success, no doubt, but once we’ve had a rest we’ll sit down and look at the work that has to be done to ensure continuity in the process. This victory did not come easy and any of the players will tell you how much they put in physically, mentally and in every other way to ensure it happened.

“We’ve been working to a theme of continuous improvement and I think against the Czechs we showed that, because it was certainly our best performance of the whole tournament.

“There was about an eight minute period in the second half where I got worried, but we got it together again and we won like a good team should.”

In a game which was nearly delayed because of a thunder and lightening storm, the Czechs opened the scoring in the 15th minute through Bernatek with an excellent goal from play, which began with a counter-attack after a fluffed Irish short corner. Ireland were level three minutes later though when they made a better work of a short corner and Mark Gleghorne finished stylishly.

An Andy Barbour reverse stick shot finished off another short corner in the 26th minute and Stephen Butler made sure with a penalty stroke just before the break.

The Czechs clawed back a goal half way through the second half, but another Butler penalty on 63 minutes closed the game out.

For players like Jason Black and Wes Bateman - two of Ireland’s most consistent performers throughout the competition, even though it was top scorer Stephen Butler who won the Man of the Tournament award - this victory was sweet.

“I often dreamt of doing something like this,” Bateman said afterwards, “but I never thought I’d see it happening. We’ve worked hard for this and there’s no doubt we deserve it, but we’ve deserved a lot of things as a team up to now and they didn’t happen. I can hardly believe it.”

For Black, who turned 28 during the competition and whose wife Suzanne had their first child just over a week ago, this was reward indeed for a lot of hard work: “An awful lot has gone into this and it has really paid off. Since Dave took over we’ve been training in some shape or form for six days every week, harder than ever before. But we’ve achieved our goal and that’s made it worthwhile,” he said.