London: Ireland’s captain Katie Mullan said on the eve of their historic Women’s World Cup final on Sunday that her team of amateurs would wake up and “grab the bull by the horns and go for it”.
The trouble was that they ran into the lean passing machine of Holland, the Oranje Ladies meandering to victory at a sun-drenched Olympic Park for their eighth world title in 14 editions.
This was pure, one-touch passing hockey — done at pace — by the defending champions. Last December, their Australian coach, Alyson Annan, was invited to Manchester City’s training ground in an attempt to seek out Pep Guardiola and add further gloss to Holland’s brand of “total hockey”.
It rained in Manchester that day and Guardiola stayed indoors. Had the weather been kinder, Ireland may have shipped more than the six by different Dutch scorers in this final rout.
And so ends Irish hockey’s finest fortnight. They will now head to Dublin tonight for a civic reception with a heroes’ welcome for good measure. “We’ve never played in a World Cup, now we have,” said Mullan. “We’ve never played in an Olympic Games, now that’s our next goal. It’s been incredible.
“People spent a fortune to make sure they were here for the final. Hopefully young girls will look at this story back home and say that they want to be sporty, be in a team and go for it.”
Ireland, ranked 15th of the 16 competing teams in London, had played Holland twice previously, also losing 6-0 in 2002 and 2013.
Yet the Irish started out as if seeking to turn world sport on its head once more. You could sense Holland riding out the early Irish attacks in the first five minutes; every move forward greeted with a cacophony of noise from the 10,000 sea-of-green sell-out crowd.
But the Irish could not find an incisive way into the Dutch circle. So it was left to Holland at the other end to deliver, in the seventh minute, when Lidewij Welten had enough venom on her scuffed shot to find a way past an unsighted Ayeisha McFerran, the goalkeeper of the tournament. It was Welten’s fifth goal and Holland’s 30th of the World Cup and opened the floodgates for outright Dutch control.
Whenever Ireland did retain possession, three Oranje sticks seemed to be on hand and, as is their wont, a second goal seemed inevitable. With McFerran seeing increasing action, she was forced into a block with her boot before the rebound fell kindly to Kelly Jonker. Her reverse stick shot was struck low and tight. Four goals in six minutes either side of the break left Ireland’s players, most of whom had taken extra holiday to train together for the last six weeks, unable to live with the Dutch swarm.
Ireland midfielder Nicci Daly knows all about speed. Her day job is to maintain speed on four wheels as a motor racing engineer in the US. Yesterday she felt full speed on two legs as the Dutch kept up their unbeaten run since the Rio Olympics. “They move so well off the ball and it’s their movement that is hard to keep up with, as they know where they are and where to play the ball,” she said.
Coach Graham Shaw admitted on Saturday that he had been asking Holland for a game for three years. With Ireland in the top 10 in next month’s rankings, they will be taken more seriously — and he now knows the task in hand.
He said: “Hopefully the people who came over to support, the people at home watching on TV now can really truly see which way this sport needs to be played. This is what we need to aim for now in how we coach our young kids, how we coach our schools, how we coach our clubs. This is hockey at the very, very highest level and hopefully now people can see that.”
