Germany defeat Ireland in men’s senior hockey international challenge match

Ireland 2 (A Sothern 2) Germany 3 (C Ruhr, C Zeller, F Fuchs)

Two goals in the closing four minutes saw Olympic champions Germany spoil Ronan Gormley’s 200th cap as they came from 2-1 down to beat Ireland 3-2 in Krefeld on Monday.

Gormley became the first Irish player to reach the milestone at the location where he currently plays his club hockey.

Any notions of a fairytale win, though, were dashed as former world player of the year Christopher Zeller struck late in the day to level the match before Florian Fuchs nabbed the winner with the last play of the game to frustrate Ireland.

Earlier, Alan Sothern – himself playing his 100th international match – had cancelled out Christopher Ruhr's first-half goal with a tidy reverse-stick finish.

And the Brussels-based striker added his second from a penalty corner to hand Ireland a shock lead with six minutes to go before Germany showed the depth of their will-power to bounce back.

The two sides meet again in Krefeld in the second Test on Tuesday at 2.30pm as preparations for the Olympic qualifiers in June ramp up in earnest.