On Sunday, Roisin Upton scored the decisive late penalty which helped Ireland overcome reigning Olympic champions Great Britain for the first time and provide a welcome confidence boost ahead of this summer's Tokyo Games.
And with a series decider against Team GB to come on Tuesday, another marker can potentially be laid down before the two teams meet again in the final round of Group A at the Olympics in a head-to-head scheduled for 31 July.
Speaking to RTÉ's Game On, Upton spoke of her delight at being part of the Irish squad to earn a first ever win against GB and what it means for the development of this current crop who already have a World Cup silver medal in their trophy cabinets.
"It was a historic day for Irish hockey and I suppose it's come a long way from the World Cup in a game which they completely dominated and beat us 1-0 in," she said.
"That's all we're trying to do over the past few years is bridge that gap and back up the World Cup silver medal and we're delighted to have the opportunity to come out and play games during Covid and validate some of the training that we've been doing."
Upton added that morale has been lifted by the win with an important few months ahead as well as benefitting from the valuable game time against top level teams.
"We played Spain five times in January and we hadn't played for a full 12 months prior to that and GB have been playing in what's known as a World League so they've had a lot more games than we have," she said.
"We have another game tomorrow but after that it's all very uncertain. We don't know when we'll be playing again.
"So we're just trying to build as a squad of 25 players up here in Belfast and trying to get everybody minutes. Selection is a huge focus point when only 16 people get to go to an Olympic Games.
"So I suppose it's just really focusing on ourselves and not so much on GB. Since the World Cup, we've really transitioned to a more attacking style. We backed ourselves defensively in the World Cup and we're a much fitter team now and we can take it to the top nations.
"It was nice being able to compete with GB for a full 70 minutes and not go up 2-1 and be scrambling for the last seven minutes and just about get over the line. We were in control and we came back against the Olympic champions when we were 1-0 down and we showed great conviction to turn that around and win 2-1, so we learned a lot about ourselves."
