Ireland 0-4 Spain European Hockey Championships

Ireland's GreenMachine hockey team lost 4-0 to Spain in the final stages of the European Hockey Championships, Ireland are currently in Pool C battling it out for rankings 5-8th and will face the Czech Rep in their final game this Sunday 8am Irish Time. Ireland opened the game with the first penalty corner of the encounter on the 4 minute mark but a mistrap led to a goal mouth scramble - Eugene Magee finally converting but after a video referral the goal was overturned for coming off an Irish arm en route to the Spanish net.

Despite dominating early attacking play Spain were first off the goal scoring mark with a great display of pace along the back line laying back for Lleonart to shoot home giving Spain a 1-0 advantage. Spain doubled their lead in the 20th minute with a penalty corner conversion from Dabanch. Ireland continued in their attacking style but despite three corner chances and playing around in the Spanish circle - Spain held strong marshalled by an excellent Cortes in goals to keep their 2-0 lead in tact at the break.

Ireland were immediately placed on the back foot when Spain secured a penalty corner just 3 minutes in and a fine execution of the routine gave Eduard Tubau the chance to drag home for Spain's third goal. Ireland immediately upped the pace with Mitch Darling getting away a chance off the back foot but the shot flew wide of the target. Spain put the game beyond Ireland's reach with just 17 minutes left as Andres Mir found himself one to one with David Harte in goals but his sweep cleared over the diving keeper making it Spain 4; Ireland 0.

Ireland continued in vein goal hunting until the final whistle but on a day where Ireland looked more tired than their counterparts it was not to be. Ireland will now do battle with the Czech Republic in a in their final encounter of this tournament at 8am (Irish Time) Sunday 25th August.

Commenting after the match Coach Andrew Meredith said "In the first 15minute we played with good structure and managed the game pretty well. After that we struggled to match them physically and started to have mental lapses, producing easy overturns and quite simply were not good enough against an on-form Spain who played very well in their Belgium game."

"We also lacked the good individual performances which had defined our tournament up until this game. Despite the loss we have to look to take as much out of the game as we can, as games against this calibre of opposition are critical in our development process for our young group moving towards the qualification process for Rio."

"We hope that we can secure support to enable the program to play the extra 15-20 games per year against the quality opposition that the top nations play in order to continue the growth shown at this tournament and support the young talent we have in Ireland." he continued.

Current Standing Pool C:
Spain - Pts 6 (GD +9)
3Poland - Pts 3 (GD +2)
Ireland - Pts (GD -2)
Czech Rep - Pts 0 (GD -8)
IRELAND Starting XI David Harte, John Jackson, Ronan Gormley, Mikie Watt, Chris Cargo, Eugene Magee, Peter Caruth, Bruce McCandless, Conor Harte, Peter Brown, Shane O'Donoghue
SPAIN Starting XI Q Cortes, S Enrique, R Romeu, R Alegre, X Lleonart, A Mir, M Salles, A Casasayas, M Terraza, D Alegre, P Quemada