Zefi the hero as Ireland win the World Cup!

SOME weeks ago we held a sports writing competition and nine-year-old Peadar Keegan submitted an entry which wasn’t published in the paper.

Peadar has imagined a wonderful World Cup tournament where Ireland come home with the goods. We hope you enjoy! And thank you, Peadar.

The team stepped off the bus. They were at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. After coming second in their qualifying group, they had to go to the play-offs against Serbia, and Ireland won with a comfortable 2-0 victory.

Ireland got drawn in Group B with Australia, Iran and Holland. Their first game was against Holland. Ireland didn’t have the greatest start, losing David McGoldrick to a red card, and the final score was Holland 5, Ireland 0.

The next game of the group was against Australia and Ireland won 2-0.

The last game was against Iran and Ireland drew 1-1 with them and we went through to the knock out stages.

In the round of 16 Ireland met Denmark, and after a boring 0-0 draw it went to extra-time. Nobody scored in extra-time so it went to penalties. Ireland were down by one, 3-2, but Troy Parrot of Tottenham fired in the equaliser to send it to sudden death.

Then Jannik Vestergaard missed for Denmark and Jeff Hendrick scored for Ireland to put them through to the quarter-finals against Uruguay and Ireland won 1-0.

The semi-final was a cracking game against the reigning champions, France. The game was decided by a controversial penalty in the last minute to give Ireland a 4-3 victory.

For the first time in their history Ireland would play in a world Cup final.

Their opponents would be their arch enemies, England.

The game was a tight affair, and was decided by a wonderful overhead kick executed by 17-year-old Kevin Zefi.

Ireland had won the world Cup!