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Australia's men's hockey team, the Kookaburras, have thrashed Ireland to continue their impressive recent run at the FIH Pro League in Europe.
The Kookaburras have continued their hot form in Belgium with a convincing win over Ireland in hockey's Pro League.
In a week where they had already twice defeated India 3-2 in Antwerp, the Australians proved too strong on Tuesday night against the bottom-placed Europeans, winning 6-1.
The defending champions surged up to second in the standings after their fourth straight win, sitting on 21 points from their 11 matches, trailing only the Netherlands (32) and sitting just above Argentina (20), with games in hand on both.
Up 2-1 at halftime, thanks to Jeremy Hayward's 123rd career goal and a Blake Govers penalty stroke, the Aussies scored three times in a blistering third quarter to put the contest beyond doubt en route to their biggest win of the season.
"They knocked off Belgium yesterday, and we knew they would've wanted to come out hard and get another win so I'm proud of the boys to come out the way they did and put on a good performance," Cooper Burns said.
Burns was joined on the scoresheet after the main break by Connar Otterbach, his maiden international goal, and Jack Welch, while Govers got his second.
The two sides face off again at the same venue on Wednesday (11.30pm AEST) before heading to London for back-to-back contests against England.
"We will make a few tweaks, we'll take a look at what we can do better and we know Ireland will come out strong again, they'll want to win and play hard hockey so we'll come back with a plan and we'll stick to that," Cooper added.