Ireland hockey team making history as they advance on Rio

When Ireland’s men take the field against India in Deodoro on Saturday, August 6th, it marks the latest journey into the unknown for a side who enjoy confounding expectations.

They become the first Irish team of any description to compete in the Olympics since their basketballing counterparts of 1948. It was 1908 when an Irish hockey team last played in the marquee event for the sport, albeit – before the formation of the state – under the British flag with England winning, Scotland coming third and Wales fourth.

Playing at the sport’s highest level marks the zenith of an emotional seven-year journey for the majority of the players, now widely seen as the golden generation.

Near misses

Eleven of the squad have been together since the 2009 World Cup qualifiers, enduring a series of near misses in pursuit of the dream. Never was this more evident than the Olympic qualifiers for London. St Patrick’s week 2012, Michael D Higgins was among the biggest home crowd ever assembled at the National Stadium for an international match.

Onlookers pressed their faces against the netting around the Belfield venue for a peak, others tuned in online to live streams to see sport for the first time. And then, devastation. Seven seconds from full-time, Korea’s Nam-Yong Lee got the faintest of touches to a crash ball just inside the circle. Initially missed, a video review confirmed the goal and the green machine’s dream of an Olympic ticket was over.

Through the tears, John Jackson – the skipper of the time – vowed his side would be back, saying: "We've got so much belief in what we're trying to do. If it's not this week, and this Olympics, it's going to be the next one. We'll take this on the chin but we're not going down."

Initially, his words looked fanciful. Ireland are the only unpaid side in the world's top 15 and the real world meant players drifted, pursuing careers, mortgages and families. Coach Paul Revington moved on, Ian Sloan and David Ames withdrew from the panel to take their chances with Britain.

The 2014 World Cup campaign stumbled along unsuccessfully. Revington's successor Andrew Meredith parted company with Hockey Ireland just 14 months into the job, then chief executive Mike Heskin stating "it just was not gelling".

It needed someone special to turn things around. Luckily, South African Craig Fulton was available and ready for the challenge. His nickname of Ned is an acronym for "never ending dream", a moniker given to him by an elderly house-mate while he was in digs.

Obsessed drive

Despite the blond highlights and laid-back, surfer-dude look, she recognised a fire and an obsessed drive behind his eyes.

He was well known in Ireland. A double Olympian with his home country, he was signed up with Pembroke as player-coach in 2005 and duly led them to the most successful run in their history, winning three All-Ireland championships and two Irish Senior Cups in four seasons.

Among his Pembroke lieutenants was Ronan Gormley – who has gone on to be Ireland's most capped player – and he credits Fulton for bringing high-performance principles into the usually fairly loose standards of club hockey.

“It was the first time we had an international standard coach who was dedicated his life to it.”

The influence did not go unnoticed and he was quickly co-opted to work with the senior team from 2006 to 2009.

Five years may have passed but Fulton, crucially, still knew the senior players inside-out and what could be achieved. Belief grew, particularly when the side beat England – a world top-four side – for the first time in 12 years.

The guts of the panel were back in place for 2015 and they swept through World League Round 2, the first phase of Olympic qualification, with plenty to spare.

World League Round 3, though, was where the tickets to Rio were going to be handed out and the build-up signs were ominous. Seven successive warm-up matches were lost and a chastening 4-1 defeat to Malaysia in the group stages hardly lifted the mood. They dropped into the fifth- to eighth-place playoffs.

An Olympic place was still on the line, though, if they could win against the higher-ranked Pakistan – a team they never beat before – and Malaysia.

The former were eliminated thanks to an Alan Sothern peach and David Harte's heroics, a last-minute touch indicative of why he was named the world's best goalkeeper.

Qualifying system

Malaysia were hammered 4-1. After six months, the vagaries of the qualifying system were ironed out, and the place was confirmed. For good measure, Ireland made more history with a first European Championships medal when they again beat England to bronze. And so to Rio.

Skipper David Harte is hopeful the opportunity can have even longer lasting effect for the game on the island.

“Hockey in Ireland is a minority sport, it is what it is. There are no excuses behind that but we flipped it on its head and instead of seeing it as a challenge we saw it as an opportunity to break the mould of being the nearly men and actually qualify for a major tournament.

“And hopefully now we can change a lot of people’s views and opinions of hockey within Ireland and maybe create much more hype and buzz around it.”

AGAINST ALL ODDS IRISH PLAYERS EXCEL

Despite being one of very few non-professional leagues at the top table of world hockey, Irish clubs can lay claim to producing more of this year’s male hockey Olympians than any other country.

In addition to Craig Fulton’s central panel of 16 and three reserves, a quarter of the Britain main panel - Iain Lewers, Mark Gleghorne, Ian Sloan and David Ames – hail from Ulster and initially played for Ireland’s senior men, a testament to the coaching at club level.

They all took three years out of international hockey to qualify to play for England and subsequently be eligible for GB selection for the Olympics. Like most sports apart from soccer, Hockey Ireland governs on a 32-county basis with Ulster club players grow up contesting interprovincial tournaments that filter into the Irish underage teams.

Previously, Ulster players were previously allowed to play for Ireland and GB simultaneously, a situation that allowed Stephen Martin – now the Olympic Council of Ireland chief executive – and Jimmy Kirkwood to win gold in Seoul in 1988.

Hockey was by invitation in those days but, with the onset of qualifying tournaments in the 1990s , this loophole closed with players now having to decide which team they wished to represent.

So what leads to their moves? For Lewers and Sloan, the primary reason was a feeling Ireland had not the structures in place to reach the highest level. Ames was more pragmatic having set up a coaching company in Nottingham.

Gleghorne never publicly declared a reason but the likelihood is he would not still be playing in Ireland, having received huge medical support in the GB system to recover from plantar fasciitis.

All are centrally contracted players with England and GB, playing full-time in their set-up at Bisham Abbey – an enviable position for an Irish team made up of teachers, students, solicitors and IT workers.