Ireland record impressive three-goal victory over Chile
BUILDING: Ireland record impressive three-goal victory over Chile. ©INPHO/Donall Farmer
Ireland ran up their biggest win of their five-game series this week at the Sport Ireland leaving coach Mark Tumilty pleased with the progress displayed in a 3-0 success against Chile.
Johnny McKee and Ben Walker both registered their fourth goals of the week in the opening 10 minutes of the tie before Michael Robson finished off the scoring with one second left in the third quarter.
“That was probably our most comprehensive performance,” Tumilty said post-match, before reflecting on a nasty knee injury sustained by Ben Johnson.
“It was obviously disappointing with the injury to Ben which put a bit of a dampener on things and hopefully it is not as bad as it could be. Really pleased with what we did out there tonight; we showed a maturity and our ball pace was good and pleased to get five wins in a row.” McKee started the ball rolling with just three minutes gone when he whipped home a penalty corner drag-flick for his 25th international goal. Soon after, Walker was diving onto a clever deflection move from another set piece as Ireland started brilliantly.
From there, Chile - spurred on by a healthy support in the stands - came more into the contest and Felipe Renz draw the best out of Jaime Carr with a backhand shot. Kyle Marshall saved a drag-flick off the line, too, to close out a thoroughly entertaining first half.
The third quarter followed suit with Mark Ingram coming on to make two outstanding saves in the Irish goal with his Chilean counterpart Adrian Henriquez following suit to keep out Johnson and McKee. Sam Hyland also had an effort disallowed by umpire Gary O’Connor who had an assured international debut with the whistle.
The killer goal came when McKee won a bully with seconds to go in the quarter and evaded the defensive lines to get off a shot. The rebound fell nicely to Robson to clip home.
And 3-0 was how it remained, making it five wins from five in Blanchardstown this week, extending their run this summer to 10 wins from their last 12 games with just one defeat.
That has lifted the side to 13th in the world rankings, jumping above Canada and South Africa in the past few days but Tumilty says the side need to start testing themselves against better sides having seen off Chile (ranked 23rd), Austria (19th), Scotland (21st), USA (22nd) and Wales (15th) in recent time..
“The key bit is we now need to be challenged against the nations above us. We definitely learned a lot from the Spanish games [in June]. We have the Nations Cup in December and will see if we can get something against the top nations to see where we are.” Before that, they have the European Championships qualifiers in Calais from August 24th to 27th where they will take on 10th ranked France as well as Lithuania and Turkey. Victory in that tournament will earn Ireland a place in Europe’s top tier for 2023 but Tumilty is taking a longer-term approach to the tournament’s important.
“It will be a big ask with the prep France have had toward Paris 2024, playing in the Pro League this year. This group is in a good place to give them a good game and Turkey and Lithuania will pose challenges as well. We need to deliver good performances there but it is mainly about building this group up, also with the Nations Cup later this year.
“But we have to realistic of where we are as a group. It is a rebuild job. That’s not giving them an excuse; we do still want to go to Calais and qualify for the European A division and we are capable of doing it if we produce a performance.
“But we need to focus on where we can get to with our world ranking in the next 12 to 24 months, get competitive and then stay at that level. We have got our Under-21s back into the [European] A division. We have to focus more on the long-term.
“We need to move away from the tournament focus which we have had too much of in the past. This is about developing as a group and where we can be over the next 12 to 24 months. Over the last 10 days, we have made big strides.”
J Carr, T Cross, J McKee, D Walsh, K O’Dea, K Marshall, S Murray, M McNellis, M Robson, B Walker, S Hyland
L Witherow, C Robson, J Lynch, B Johnson, N Page, M Ingram
A Henriquez, J Purcell, V Goni, Fernando Renz, J Maldonado, K Gesswein, A Pizarro, J Amoroso, J Hurtado, Felipe Renz, R Valenzuela Subs: M Rodriguez, I Contardo, D Ordoñez, A Richter, A Troncoso, N Strabucchi, A Araya
R Abbott, G O’Connor
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