(field) Hockey around the globe

[Duncan Gardner]

Reina Sofia, Baccarat, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, a sus chicas un inferno del fuego

[elguapo4]

Brilliant result,it's been a great few weeks for Irish women's sport even if this is as far as they go

[Janik]

Question for the Irish on here: what other World Cup Finals have your teams made over the years? I'll take any sport at senior level, possibly excluding ones which only you and Australia play so you qualify for the title match of automatically. Golf? Does that have a World Cup?

[Janik]

Whilst waiting for an answer, one little tidbit - Ireland have been behind for just 7 minutes in the entire tournament, which were the dying embers against England when it didn't matter. They haven't even been behind in either penalty shuffles competition.

[elguapo4]

We won the Golf world cup a couple of times and Stephen Roche won the cycling world championships but this is the first adult team sport we've ever reached the final in afaik

[elguapo4]

Previous best was reaching the semi-finals in the u20 world cup with a team featuring Robbie Keane and Damian Duff
The senior soccer and Rugby teams have never got further than the quarters

[Janik]

In the second Semi, the Dutch are turning up the heat on the Aussies after a slow start. 2nd quarter circle penetrations are 10-0 with ~5 minutes of it left. But the important stat, the scoreline, is only 1-0.

[Janik]

Jodie Kenny, the Aussie player wiped out by the Argentine 'keeper in the QF shoot-out, is playing. And that despite her arm apparently being in a sling for the two days in between. She is even taking the Aussie shorts, both drag-flicks and straight strikes, one of the later early being deflected by the 'keeper on to the bar. Both skills use a lot of shoulder, so must be painful.

[Janik]

Netherlands have missed a glut of chances and been denied by a superb performance from Aussie 'keeper Rachel Lynch (who tops McFerran as the best goalie in the tournament in my opinion), and its now cost them with Australia equalising from a penalty corner with 7 minutes left.

[Janik]

Both Semis finish 1-1 and go to a shoot-out.

According to the Kate Richardson-Walsh, the Dutch are rattled. They should be, Lynch looks really hard to beat.

Edit - of course, the Dutch Women have had some painful shoot-out defeats recently. Like the last Olympic final. Which KRW might have had in mind...

[Janik]

Not this time, Holland win the shuffles 3-1. So Netherlands vs Ireland in the Final at 4:30pm tomorrow.

[Diable Rouge]

Not this time, Holland win the shuffles 3-1. So Netherlands vs Ireland in the Final at 4:30pm tomorrow.

Going to be an interesting decision tomorrow for RTE - technically, they're supposed to be showing GAA on both channels, but thankfully, one game's a dead rubber, so they can clear the decks for the Final.

[Diable Rouge]

We won the Golf world cup a couple of times and Stephen Roche won the cycling world championships but this is the first adult team sport we've ever reached the final in afaik

I think we won the World Elephant Polo Championship about a decade ago!

https://www.balls.ie/other-sports/re...in-2005-329810

[Janik]

Surely that is an easy call. One of these events happens every year, the other is a complete outlier that may never occur again. Stick the GAA on a stream or something. The few diehards of the teams involved who get bumped will likely whine, but they will surely be significantly outnumbered by those happy with such a call.

More intriguing will be whether RTE chose to pick up rights or sign a co-broadcast agreement with BT Sport for the Men's World Cup. That is happening later in the year in India, essentially over the first half of December. The Irish Men's team was ahead of the Irish Women up until two weeks ago; their world ranking is 10, they qualified for the last Olympics and won a bronze medal at a recent Euro Champs (as I think I mentioned up thread). It would be good for Hockey as a sport if that was shown, though the time differences might be a problem as India is 5 1/2 hours ahead so the matches will happen in mid-afternoon Irish time.

[Janik]

I should have mentioned the elephant in the room, which is whatever side loses this is likely to also lose the bronze medal match and miss out on a medal entirely.

Which is exactly what happ... no it isn't! Spain have just beaten Australia 3-1 to take the bronze. Their first win over the Aussies in a World Cup match (previous record 0-1-4) and a very rare win overall (the commentator gave stats of something like 55 overall meetings and 42 Australia wins previously).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Previous best was reaching the semi-finals in the u20 world cup with a team featuring Robbie Keane and Damian Duff
The senior soccer and Rugby teams have never got further than the quarters

Robbie Keane wasn't in that squad. Richie Dunne was a fringe player. It was damien duff and a load of players who basically all wound up in the league of Ireland.

This is great. Though I think that if the more traditionally successful countries knew just how tiny hockey is in Ireland, they would probably be a bit upset. This is just an offspring of the large increase in women's sport in Ireland over the last little while. sports like Gaelic football and Camogie are exploding, both in terms of participation and technical and physical development. (in parallel with the mens games) though given the rows we've seen over the last couple of years, the FAI and the IRFU have a fucking long way to go, before they are showing womens sport proper respect.

Sadly the game doesn't seem to be going too well.

[anton pulisov]

They'll be dancing in the ample back gardens of Heemstede tonight.

[Janik]

Ah nuts. Fun while it lasted, but the big orange ogres had to turn up and insist on reality intruding.

(Clearly the best team, deserved to win, the right finalist given the tournament, blah di blah)

[Mumpo]

Why are hockey pitches blue?

[Janik]

The default for club level pitches remains green. However being an astroturf they can be any colour really, and it's just small c conservatism that paints them the same colour as grass. I think the Lee Valley pitch was the first 'SmurfTurf' back in it's previous location and guise near the Copper Box. And that was simply taking the branding colours of the London games (blue and pink) and applying it to the Hockey arena. There is also a claimed advantage in TV coverage, that the ball (yellow in London 2012, white in the World Cup just gone) which is small and fast moving, is easier to see against a blue background than a green one. Apparently.
The FiH have taken that branding and ran with it as it serves as a differentiation for the sport. Their rules allow either blue or green, with a preference for blue.

[Duncan Gardner]

Six of the silver medal squad come from NI. At the last Olympics eight of the Ireland mens team and three of the UK mens team came from NI but at the Commonwealth Games held in Australia earlier this year there were no hockey players from NI.

Also never a NI sevens rugby team at Commonwealth Games.

Discuss

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

not enough posh prods in Northern ireland as a result of mass migration? Football seems to be the only sport that vaguely recognized the partition of the country, and even that took 30 years to sink in. The GAA seemed to completely ignore the existence of Northern ireland, whereas. Rugby, cricket, hockey and all the sports played by the Castle Catholic class, and the planter class seemed to ignore the war of independence completely.

[Duncan Gardner]

not enough posh prods in Northern ireland as a result of mass migration?

If there are enough of them to provide the players, there are enough family, friends and hardcore to provide a crowd, infrastructure etc. to go the CW Games. In this
report from Belfast my old school chum Roisin (front, second left in hooped top) still plays, with her daughter who's a youth interprovincial. Berba will enjoy that a) the BBC have this in the politics section, and b) feel the need to sub-title even posh hockey players

I'm slightly self-conscious about the latter as I'm losing some hearing in my left ear and so probably shout more than I did...

Partly answering my own question, NI doesn't play rugby 7s because the IRFU gobshites won't let them. The latter aren't ignoring partition as much as snubbing it

[Janik]

That is a lot of people to welcome a Hockey team home. Or any Women's sports team, frankly. One might argue that you need a bigger avenue, there.

I really hope Hockey Ireland have got some clever and imaginative people involved, because they will never have another chance as good as this to grow the sport.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

then they'd have to go to the Northside..... (O'Connell st, Parnell St, or even god love us, Gardiner st?

Actually that's pretty much the perfect spot to have it. That stage is in front of the olympia, and they've blocked off as far as the corner of George's st. That's quite far, and the road is quite wide at that point. That's a big space to fill with people, and it looks like they got it just about spot on. if it had been up nearer Trinity college, it wouldn't have such well defined edges and a much bigger crowd would have looked disappointing.

A lot will hinge on how they expand the number of schools playing hockey. A burst of success saw the Rugby team expand outside of a very limited number of schools, over a period of time and that lead to a much wider player pool (even if most of the successful young players are still going to the same few schools. but those schools have top coaches hired at great expense so that's a bit of a vicious circle) This is going to be tricky for them. Hockey would have been a big favourite with the better class of Nuns (Loreto Order) but those nuns are all dead now. But it has a certain er, cachet, and that is a useful thing to have when trying to expand in Irish schools, particularly when we're going through an economic up turn.

one huge thing that is in their favour is that there's a bit of a revolution in irish sport in general, and literally anything seems possible. so if they can get their act together, they can make a huge leap in a very short time. in principle there's no real reason other than custom why Hockey isn't bigger here. It's a watchable sport, a kind of cross between a more accessible form of hurling and five a side football. It requires a fair deal of skill, and enough disregard for the health of the player to be interesting. They're up against the GAA though. That's a tough opponent.