Muller upbeat ahead of qualifiers

Ireland begin their Olympic Qualifying Tournament on Saturday night, taking on Malaysia.

And coach Gene Muller is upbeat about the side’s build-up to the tournament “I am very happy with our preparations including the last week in camp out here which has all gone to plan. At this point with the first match just around the corner we are anxious to get the qualifiers under way and off to a good start.”

Ireland played a forty minute training match against Canada yesterday as part of their session which saw them draw one all “the training game went well and the match was very impressive, it was only a forty minute game which saw us pull back from one down to level at one all”.

Looking at the tournament, Muller said “We are taking this one game at a time but we need to get ourselves into a good position early on so we are in contention towards the end of the tournament.

“In the first two games we really want to come out with at least four points, ideally we don’t want to drop more than two points and put ourselves up against a wall, we want to be in contention all the way through.”

World number 14s, Ireland are the second highest ranked side in the group behind Korea and above by Italy (19), host Canada (23), Malaysia (24) and Uruguay (27). The top two from the pool stages go on to play in a final on Sunday 4th May in a winner takes all match to take that final Olympic spot.

Live commentary from the matches and full match reports are available online at http://www.olympicqualifierwomencanada.sportcentric.com/

Match Schedule: Victoria Canada; (Local time/Irish time)
April 26 Ireland v Malaysia, 16.30/00.30
April 27 Ireland v Canada, 14.30/22.30
April 29 Ireland v Uruguay, 12.30/20.30
May 1 Ireland v Korea, 12.30/20.30
May 3 Ireland v Italy, 16.30/00.30
May 4 Classification Matches

SQUAD (Age/Caps)
Emma Clarke (22, 45), Eimear Cregan (Capt)(26, 131), Mary Goode (GK)(28, 42), Louisa Healy (GK)(26, 27), Lisa Jacob (20, 23), Jenny McDonough (26, 102), Shirley McCay (19, 40), Cathy McKean (29, 96), Bridget McKeever (25, 105), Hollie Moffett (22, 8), Louisa Moore (23, 11), Ciara O’Brien (V Capt)(28, 144), Julia O’Halloran (19, 31), Clare Parkhill (27, 62), Cliodhna Sargent (20, 23), Alex Speers (22, 35), Emma Stewart (20, 48), Nikki Symmons (25, 93)