It was a night of what-might-have-beens for the Irish women's hockey team in Harare yesterday when their World Cup qualifying dreams were ended by China in the 5th-8th place play-offs.
The 3-0 scoreline was, however, an inaccurate reflection of the night's contest, with China breaking to score twice in the final 12 minutes when Ireland were pouring forward in a desperate search for an equaliser.
China had gone into the match without two of their key players who were suspended for the rest of the tournament after the extraordinary scenes that followed their defeat by Scotland on Friday night.
Chinese players and officials, outraged by the award of a short corner to Scotland 11 minutes from time, from which Rhona Simpson scored the only goal of the match, surrounded Japanese umpire Naomi Kato at full-time and she appeared to be struck with a stick by at least one player. Meanwhile tournament officials sitting under the main stand were spat on and had objects thrown at them by angry Chinese supporters.
After a meeting of FIH officials on Saturday night two Chinese players and the team manager were suspended and the entire squad received a warning.
After officially apologising to the tournament director the Chinese went into last night's match with a 14-player squad but their flagging morale received a boost in the 20th minute when, against the run of play, they opened the scoring - Ying Liu's shot from a short corner was deflected past Alison Vance.
Once again a lack of finishing power, particularly from short corners, cost the Irish dear. They failed to score from one of their 13 corners last night and, after six matches in the tournament, have a record of just four goals from 44.
Twelve minutes from time a Chinese counter-attack led to Liu's second goal and with just seven minutes to go Jian Chen sealed her country's place in next May's World Cup finals with her team's third goal.
"I think we played our heart out but we just weren't good enough tonight in terms of finishing - but in terms of general play we were probably better than we were against Japan, Canada or South Africa," said coach Terry Gregg at full time.
"I think we've done very well here to get this far. We played well in every game but we've only had the breaks in two and we're not good enough to win by right. The players have done very well, there's no shame, the wheels didn't come off and we stuck together. We've lifted our ranking so we should be proud of that."
Ireland play Russia tomorrow morning in their final match of the tournament, which will decide the seventh and eighth places. Earlier in the day England secured their qualification with a 2-1 victory over Russia in the 5th-8th place play-offs.
Ireland: A Vance, K Humphreys, A Thompson, J Stewart, C Craig, R Kohler, J Turner (capt), S Kelleher, C Devine, M Logue, J Burke. Subs: L McVicker, C McMahon, C O'Kelly.
China: H Ding, H Cheng, D Cai, H Chen, J Chen, Y Wang, Y Liu, L Qin, H Yong (capt), J Wang, J Huang. Subs: J B Chen, C Tang.
9th-12th place play-offs: Japan 5 (A Kato, K Miura, K Minbuta, S Iwao, T Tsuki), Zimbabwe 2 (S Northcroft, W Edwards); Spain 3 (T Motos, N Camon, S Munoz), Canada 2 (L Kopeck 2). 5th-8th place play-offs: England 2 (D Marston-Smith pen, T Cullen), Russia 1 (T Vasioukova); Ireland 0, China 3 (Y Liu 2, JB Chen).
Today's fixtures - Play-offs: 11th-12th: Zimbabwe v Canada, 8.0 a.m.; 9th-10th: Spain v Japan, 10.30 a.m. Semi-finals: South Africa v Scotland, 2.0; India v New Zealand, 4.30.
