{"id":309892,"date":"2025-08-01T18:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T18:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/309892\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T18:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T18:14:11","slug":"wales-women-reach-euro-top-flight-for-first-time-in-24-years-as-men-also-go-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/309892\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales women reach Euro top flight for first time in 24 years as men also go up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Wales will play in the European top flight for the first time in 24 years in 2027 after beating Austria 2-1 in dramatic fashion in their Women&#8217;s EuroHockey Championship II semi-final in Poland.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It will mark Wales&#8217; return to the European A Division for the first time since 2003 having already secured a place in the World Cup qualifiers for just the second time in their history, by progressing from the group stage in Gniezno.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wales&#8217; men will also play in the World Cup qualifiers and Europe&#8217;s 2027 top flight after their 5-0 win over Italy in the EuroHockey Championship II in Portugal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Against Austria, Wales women captain Beth Bingham struck first, in the 21st minute, by tapping in from a penalty corner rebound.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kristine Vukovich levelled for Austria with 10 minutes left through a penalty corner, but Amy Cradden stepped up to score the winner late on, also from a penalty corner, to spark Wales&#8217; celebrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales will play in the European top flight for the first time in 24 years in 2027 after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-309892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114954873288207047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}