Irish can beat Pool A rivals, says Clarke

IRELAND’S men’s hockey coach John Clarke watched France beat Russia on Monday and despite his own side’s 6-4 loss to Spain, he is quietly confident of being able to beat both Pool A rivals, with the Russians being first up on the agenda at Montjuich this afternoon.

Clarke is not given to making unnecessary or unrealistic predictions, but speaking it is obvious he fancies Ireland's chances.

The French were not particularly impressive in their 3-0 win over the Russians and it did not escape Clarke's attention that the losers missed a hatful of goal chances and generally gave the French a far more difficult game than the scoreline suggests.

"I watched that match and I thought there was a lot for us to take out of it and we will be working on a number of things before the game with Russia," he said.

Clarke's aim coming here was to collect victories against the Russians, French and Belgians in the overall plan to secure a top six placing in these championships.

Russia are first up today and the first and most important thing on the Irish squad's mind is getting points on the board in what they see as a "must win" game.

"We played well against Spain, but we got nothing out of it in terms of points," Clarke says. "It is one thing to play well and lose to one of the favourites to win the tournament, but the shoe will be on the other foot against the Russians as we will go in as favourites and we need the three points from a victory. We beat Spain 3-2 in the second half on Monday, but equally the wheels could have come off when we were 4-1 down, so we don't want to make silly mistakes against the Russians."

"The Russians are very good on attack and they can break quickly, so we will want to close them down in defence and try and keep them on the back foot," he added. One element of concern, however, is the health of number one goalie and squad captain Nigel Henderson from Pembroke Wanderers who was concussed in the early stages of the game against Spain.

While Henderson was knocked out in a collision with one of his own defenders, he is reported to have recovered but will almost certainly miss the clash with Russia. Nevertheless, this is not a particular worry for Clarke.

"Wes Bateman came on during the Spain game and he did very well indeed, making a number of world class saves. Wes is undoubtedly an international class goalie so the likelihood that he will start against Russia is not a concern at all," Clarke commented.

Apart from long-term injury victim Gordon Elliot, who is not expected to make an appearance before either the pool games against Germany tomorrow or France on Saturday because of ankle ligament problems, Ireland have no serious injury worries.

The players had a light training session at the Polo Club in Barcelona yesterday afternoon and came through that without any problems. Riet Kuper's Irish ladies' face Italy early this morning and Ireland's Dutch coach is not taking anything for granted after surprisingly being turned over by the Italians in a tournament in Wales recently.

"We beat them 1-0 and then they beat us 2-1 in the next game and that was a surprise, but with the win over Wales in our first game on Monday, there is a lot more to come from the girls and I would be hopeful we can put three more points on the board," Kuper said.

She said the performance against the Welsh was disappointing despite the victory, but she was very heartened by the performances she had seen from Eimear Cregan and captain Rachel Kohler in particular.

"We've played the Italians recently and we know what they have to offer.

"Provided we can lift the performance level up a few notches from what we saw against Wales, I think we can take three more points.

"That was our intention coming here to try and beat Wales, Italy and the Ukraine in our pool and if we can beat the Italians, we can do that."

Victory against the Italians will be important for confidence for the Irish girls as they then face the might of Germany on Friday, before meeting the Ukrainians on Saturday.

And returnee to the squad, Karen Bateman, wife of men's goalie Wes, reckons that they can do a job today.

"We didn't play particularly well against the Welsh and still won, so we know we can do better than that. We'll be aiming to do just that against the Italians. We want to improve and we can and now we want to have six points in the bag after two games."