About three-quarters of an hour after the match the Irish players started drifting back onto the pitch, a couple of them barefoot, some of them tearful. They gathered in clusters of twos and threes, and you did not need to hear what they were saying to know what they were feeling. Two defeats in little more than a day, at the end of a gruelling week, had smothered their Olympics.
It did not take long for all the players to re-emerge, and after a while you could sense the temperature shift, just by a degree or two. They started taking pictures on their phones and mingling and chatting, inhaling the last aromas of a scented journey. They gathered for a team photograph, and then the players moved into the middle of the pitch and linked arms in a tight circle. From where we were sitting we couldn’t tell who sang the first line, but before the chorus everybody had joined in, belting out the lyrics with smiles on their faces. High by the Lighthouse Family was the song; their song, clearly.
All of them understood that this was their last night together as a group. Of the 16 players who took part yesterday, five of them are in their 30s and a couple of others will hit that mark before next year’s World Cup. The qualifying games for that tournament are being staged in October. The challenge for Ireland will be to evolve again without checking stride and that will tricky.
Yesterday, though, was more about endings than new beginnings. “It is raw emotion,” Hannah McLoughlin said. “Firstly not getting to the quarter-finals, which I think we were more than capable of. Secondly, knowing this is probably a few of our players’ last games. It is not the send-off any of us wanted to give them.
“But we have broken the ceiling, coming to the Olympics, and for those of us fortunate enough to keep going, we want to push on for Paris and then go for quarters and semis.”
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Ireland were not good enough yesterday; the damage, though, was done the day before. Having done so well for long periods in defeat against Germany and the Netherlands earlier in the week, their tournament really hinged on beating India. Losing that game to a late goal forced Ireland into a corner.
India conceded three equalisers against South Africa yesterday morning, but they scored the seventh and last goal in the game, and that left Ireland with a simple imperative: to progress to the quarter-finals they had to beat Great Britain. In the game it never looked likely, not for a minute.
“Maybe a little bit of inexperience throughout the week cost us,” Roisin Upton said. “But it was our first Games and it’s a tough competition. The margins are very slim, but we know we can compete. The more we play the top teams the better we’re going to get.”
Yesterday, the Olympic champions showed their class. Apart from one spell in the second quarter and another period towards the end, they controlled the game. They opened the scoring after 17 minutes, from their sixth penalty corner. The excellent Ayeisha McFerran saved the initial shot, but Susannah Townsend seized on the rebound from McFerran’s pads and finished it beautifully in the air with her second touch.
It was no more than Britain deserved. Their use of the ball was slick and accurate, and they penned Ireland into their own half for most of the opening quarter.
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Britain pressed well too when they did not have possession, and time and again Ireland were turned over trying to move the ball out of defence. After Britain scored, though, Ireland seemed to shake themselves. They moved the ball with more zip, and for the first time in the game staked out some territory in the British half. Their build-up play, though, lacked incision or guile, and they did not force a penalty corner in the first half.
Maddie Hinch in the British goal was not forced to make a save until five minutes before half-time, when Nikki Daly whipped a fierce backhand shot that Hinch deflected over the crossbar.
Daly was making her 200th appearance for Ireland last night, a staggering number, and even though, at 33, she was the joint-oldest player on the field, she was also one of Ireland’s brightest sparks.
Ireland desperately needed an assertive start to the second half but the opposite happened. Within a minute Britain had doubled their lead when a really good cross into the Irish circle was finished coolly by Leah Julia Wilkinson.
The goal was referred to the video umpire to the double-check that the cross had not been made with the back of the stick, but there was no change to the on-field call. Game over.
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Ireland: McFerran, McAuley, McCay, Upton, Tice, Watkins, Mullan, O’Flanagan, Hawkshaw, Duke, Torrans. Subs: McLoughlin, Matthews, Holden, Malseed, Daly .
Great Britain: Hinch, Unsworth, Toman, Jones, Townsend, Robertson, Rayer, Ansley, Pearne-Webb, McCallin, Owsley. Subs: Martin, Petter, Wilkinson, Crackles, Balsdon. Goals: Townsend 17, Martin 31
Umpires: C de la Fuente (ARG), E Yamada (JPN).