Limerick hockey star Roisin Upton wins her 100th international cap

LIMERICK hockey star Roisin Upton has been heralded on the occasion of her 100th international cap.

The Catholic Institute star made her 100th appearance in this Monday's 2-1 victory against Italy in Ireland's second pool match in the Women’s FIH Hockey Nations Cup in Valencia.

"Roisin is one of our key players and I’m so pleased for her. What a wonderful milestone and I hope she has a lot more," said Irish coach Sean Dancer of the Limerick star who made her Irish debut in 2016.

He was particularly happy with the way that Ireland took their chances in the win over Italy.

"We scored two field goals today which is something we have worked hard at. The game was very close. The first half was about trying to control, taking away a few of their strengths and their skills and we did that very well in the first half. That set us up for the second half," he said.

"You’re always happy when you win, that’s what our job is about, high performance is all about getting results. The important thing for us is that it keeps us moving forward in the tournament. We’re now on three points and it gives us a good opportunity against Korea to get a result and then into the semi-finals," he added.

As she reached her milestone Upton was at the centre of a lot of what Ireland did well.

"We really wanted to bounce back after yesterday. We thought we performed well, we just needed to get a good result today to set us up for a final game against Korea. We didn’t make too many changes, we just talked about how we could do things a little bit better."

She added: "My own role today was, basically, myself and the other centre back just looking to manipulate the centre forward and see if we could create an overload and I had the opportunity to do that sometimes from the middle, and then we executed well up front".

Upton's club-mate Naomi Carroll was among the goals in Monday's win.

"I think we created a lot of opportunities in the first half and we were disappointed not to put them away, so we were delighted to take our first one in the second half and then to keep stepping up and keep pushing," she said, but Carroll knows the job is not yet done.

"We know Korea are a very fast team, they’ve very quick hands, and we know that this is going to be a very tough game on Thursday so we’re going to take tomorrow, regroup and take a look at the video today and get going again. Really excited for our third match."

Ireland play Korea in their final group game on Thursday at 9.45am - a win would secure them a semi-final spot on Friday which would see them play either first or second in Pool B, depending on the results of the other group matches.