Ireland team manager Rodrigo Pessoa lamented some costly second round mistakes that saw his side finish in joint fifth place in the five-star Division 1 Nations Cup at Rotterdam.
Ireland were in a four-way tie for the lead at the halfway stage, with four teams on a zero score and four more within a single fence of the leaders. Ireland’s first rider in the opening round, Shane Breen and the Prince Sultan-owned Golden Hawk, lowered a single rail and this would prove the discard score after all three Irish riders who followed jumped clear.
Eight of the 15 fences were raised for the second round and the competition took on a different complexion as fences began to fall for many of the teams.
Shane Breen and Golden Hawk lowered two fences second time out, while Darragh Kenny finished with the same score aboard Charly Chaplin S.
Irish hopes were raised when Wexford’s Bertram Allen completed an excellent double clear round with Hector van d’Abdijhoeve.
Ireland’s anchor rider Cian O’Connor, finished with eight faults with Good Luck, to leave Ireland on a 16 fault total in joint fifth place along with Germany and the home team from The Netherlands.
Sweden lifted the winner’s trophy when finishing on just four faults with Switzerland second on eight faults while Italy and Spain shared third place on 12.
"We can take the positives from the performance in that we put ourselves in contention to win at the halfway stage," a reflective Pessoa said afterwards.
"We are of course disappointed with the second round that we could not deliver. We had some small mistakes that we must correct for the next time.
"Our guys are all good professionals and they are of course disappointed that they could not get a better result but they realise that it is not always possible to win all the time.
"Hopefully this will be our discard score in the league. We still have three very important points-scoring rounds to come, with some new horses to try out. Good results in those rounds will put us in a strong position on the league table and our big goal for this year which is the European Championships," he said.
The result means Ireland now lie in seventh place on the FEI Nations Cup league table with 210 points, though most of the teams above Ireland have competed at more points-scoring rounds than Ireland.
