A Jodie Kenny drag flick in the 60th minute was the deciding factor in a thrilling finale to the action at the The Hawkes Bay Eight Nations hockey tournament.
And the week-long hockey showcase has left the coaches of the eight participating teams with plenty to ponder as they prepare for the Hockey World League Semi Finals, which will be taking place in June. The finals turned out to be continental affairs as the teams from Oceania battled it out for top spot and teams from Asia contested bronze.
The world’s number two team, Australia, beat host nation New Zealand in a ding-dong battle between the Transtasman rivals. Despite the Black Sticks taking the lead in the opening minute through a Gemma Flynn penalty corner, it was the Hockeyroos who won the tournament after a scoring frenzy in the last 20 minutes of the game, including the match-winning penalty corner from Kenny with just seconds left on the clock. The final result was 3-2.
New Zealand’s coach, Mark Hager, said: “To let Australia score on the stroke of full-time is absolutely heart-breaking for the girls. This is not how we wanted to end the tournament.”
For Australia, this was a return to scoring ways after the early rounds of the tournament had seen their free-flowing style of attack stifled by some great defence by China and Korea in particular. Coach Adam Commens said: “We have Anna Flanagan and Casey Sablowski to come back into the squad, but the squad for Antwerp will be a similar line-up to this one.We have learnt a lot about our team and where we need to be if we want to be consistently winning tournaments.”
The bronze medal match was a fiercely competitive match between Asian rivals Korea and China. The Chinese won 3-2 but were made to work hard by their opponents, who were recovering from a 4-0 drubbing by New Zealand in the semi-finals. Throughout the tournament, both China and Korea had impressed with their cohesive defensive structure, but China’s Yang Peng said that this was something the team still needed to concentrate upon.
Craig Parnham, Team USA’s coach professed himself pleased with his team’s final performance – a convincing 3-0 win over work number three side Argentina to take fifth place. “Our off the ball work has improved as we got more matches under our belt and the players are now working to create chances in front of goal. This tournament has given us some terrific game time and has been great preparation for the upcoming World League matches.”
India and Japan came into the seventh/eighth place play-offs with just a draw apiece. India eventually triumphed with a 3-2 scoreline and coach Roel Oltmans said he was pleased with the team’s persistence and desire to score goals. “Japan was tough, but today we kept our structure, kept playing and the result came.”
