Irish challenge falls just short

At one stage yesterday afternoon, a helicopter swooped over the sand hills by the 12th green - disturbing, it must be said, England's Walker Cup player Danny Willett who was standing over an important putt at the time - as if in a scene from Apocalypse Now. It was a surreal scene, which only briefly took attention away from the golf, where England eventually managed to overcome Ireland by 8½ points to 6½ to set up what, in effect, is a final showdown with Scotland today in the men's amateur Home Internationals at Baltray.

Ireland - the European champions - will face Wales in a match to avoid the wooden spoon.

Ireland, who haven't won the Raymond Trophy since 2003 in Ballybunion, put up a brave but ultimately futile effort against England, a side bristling with youth save for the presence of old hand Gary Wolstenholme.

Yet, Wolstenholme proved that age has its attributes in winning both his foursomes and singles matches yesterday in the critical middle-order in assisting England's cause.

Ireland lost the foursomes 2-3, a situation which could have been even worse for Ireland but for the heroics of Pat Murray and Joe Lyons, who turned around their match with Chris Wood and Sam Hutsby with winning birdies on the 13th and 14th and then closing out the match on the 16th green. So the Irish entered the singles requiring a return of six points from the 10 matches. It was not to be.

However, in confirming that his is a burgeoning talent, Irish champion Shane Lowry was an impressive winner in the top singles with Willett, the Esker Hills player grabbing control of the match shortly after the turn with a hat-trick of wins from the 11th.

He eventually won 2 and 1, at which stage the leaderboards were dotted with green figures to indicate some sort of Irish supremacy. It wasn't to last, though.

"It was good to go out early and get a win and, hopefully, have the lads feed off that," said Lowry, a 20-year-old with an exquisite short game whose first duty after securing the win was to inform by phone his father, Brendan, the former Offaly footballer who is on a Mediterranean cruise with his All-Ireland team-mates of 25 years ago.

Just over an hour later, however, the situation had changed as England took control of the decisive matches. Ireland's only wins came from Murray, who was three down after five holes against Charlie Ford only to turn it around with an impressive performance to win 3 and 2, and Niall Kearney and Neil Ó Briain. And Simon Ward halved his match.

It wasn't enough, but the fact that the five defeats all finished on the 17th green shows how close it all was.

England's winners were Ben Evans, Matthew Cryer, Wolstenholme, Wood and Whitnell.

Scotland's success over Wales was only secured in the very last match of the singles, where Kevin McAlpine won the 18th to halve his match with Jamie Howe to give them a crucial half a point to provide overall victory.

The Scots will be going for the third successive win in the championships in today's head-to-head with England.