WOMENS HOCKEY: Two 1-0 defeats on home soil to a Scottish team four places below them in the world rankings - and one they beat quite comfortably in the European Championships just five months ago - was hardly an encouraging start to Ireland's build-up to April's World Cup Qualifier in Rome, but the mitigating factors left Irish coach Riet Kuper less than despondent after the second of the defeats at a rain-soaked Belfield yesterday.
Scotland are, after all, in the advanced stages of their preparations for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in early March, a recent trip to Germany helping them sharpen up, and were able to field a team over the weekend that was largely unchanged from the one that played in the Europeans in Dublin in the summer.
Ireland, by contrast, were playing their first competitive games since beating Ukraine in August and, more significantly, were starting life without Lynsey McVicker and Jenny Burke, both of whom retired after the European Championships, as did left-back Katharine Maybin. Another of the team's mainstays, Jill Orbinson, was missing through injury.
Kuper, then, gave debuts to four players over the weekend - Zanya Dahl, Louise Henderson, Sinead Dooley and Katherine Elkin - and run-outs to some of her squad with only a handful of caps, amongst them goalkeepers Mary Goode and Louisa Healy, both of whom impressed.
Still, the failure to score once over 140 minutes of hockey gave Kuper a fair indication of where her team's chief weakness lies. They had their chances in both games, but Rhona Simpson's seventh minute goal on Saturday and Cheryl Valentine's 43rd minute effort yesterday, when she lobbed the ball into the goal after Goode had come off her line to deal with the advancing Nikki Kidd, proved decisive.
The margin of defeat yesterday might well have been greater but for Goode, who denied Kidd, Valentine and Simpson in one-on-ones early in the second half. Nikki Symmons had a goal ruled out at the end of Ireland's first attack, the umpire spotting a foot making contact with the ball, but after that short corner strikes from Eimear Cregan and Dooley were the best the hosts could muster.
There is, then, much work to be done before Rome, with the rebuilding stepping up a gear in South Africa next month and Argentina in March, where Ireland will compete in two high-class four nations' tournaments.
On the club front Pegasus and Ballymoney won through to the final of the Ulster Shield, with semi-final wins over Randalstown and Omagh, in what will be a repeat of last year's decider.
University of Limerick set up a third round away tie to Hermes by beating Galway 4-0 in yesterday's ESB Irish Senior Cup game.
Hermes, meanwhile, advanced to the quarter-finals of the Jacqui Potter Leinster Cup, which they won last season, by beating Old Alexandra II with two Molly Powers goals.
