THE prestigious five-star Longines League of Nations moved to Rotterdam in The Netherlands over the weekend for the third leg of the series, with classes running from Thursday until Sunday.

The team competition ran on Friday afternoon and High Performance Manager Jessica Kurten had selected Galway's Michael Duffy with Mister Qerly Z; Tyrone's Niamh McEvoy with BP Rocket Man (ISH), bred by Austin Broderick; Derry's Jordan Coyle with Chaccolino and Cork's Shane Sweetnam with Coriaan van Klapscheut Z to represent Ireland, with the squad being drawn eighth of the 10 teams to jump. Hopes were high after the Irish runner-up finish in Ocala.

Duffy was first to jump for Ireland and picked up just four faults over the challenging 1.60m track, when a pole fell at the first part of the double. 22-year-old McEvoy was next up with the nine-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding BP Rocket Man and they collected eight faults. Coyle showed his class when jumping a flawless clear round, as did Sweetnam, which meant Ireland finished round one on a score of four, putting them into third place at the halfway stage and comfortably within the top eight teams to proceed to round two.

It was a tale of two halves though and things didn’t go quite so smoothly second time round. With just three riders required for round two, Duffy, Coyle and Sweetnam were chosen to jump again.

Duffy went first for the team and finished on 12 faults, with Coyle and Sweetnam each picking up four. With no score to discard in the second round, these 20 faults were added to the first-round score of four, giving a total of 24 for a sixth-place finish.

After round two, the top three teams - Great Britain, the USA and Switzerland - were all on eight faults, so a jump-off was required to decide the winner. In an exciting turn of events, all three riders jumped clear, so it was down to the clock to determine the podium placings. With only half a second between the three, Di Lampard’s British squad took first place, ahead of the USA in second and Switzerland in third.

Kurten said afterwards: “Everyone tried their best in Rotterdam today, and we had great performances from Jordan and Shane.”

Ireland’s sixth place in Rotterdam sees them retain their third place in the overall standings on 205 points, behind Germany in first on 230 and Great Britain in second on 225. The fourth leg is due to be held at St Tropez-Gassin in September, ahead of the Barcelona final in October.

Individually, Niamh McEvoy and Olympic ‘gl’ ‘Fvd’ placed seventh in Saturday’s 1.50m Boels Prize jump-off class. Of the 33 starters, nine had jumped clear within the time in the first round to book their place in the jump-off, with just four of those completing double clear. The class was won by Michael Greeve (NED) on Rubens with a clean sheet in 40.14.