High-octane start for SA teams at Indoor Hockey World Cup

In a morning of high-octane action, the SA teams showed admirable fighting qualities as the FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup, presented by SPAR, made a thrilling start at the Heartfelt Arena in Pretoria on Sunday. 

Seldom has a sports event in SA generated as much excitement as the start of the sixth edition of the World Cup, with the home men’s team, powered by Tops at SPAR, drawing 3-3 with Australia, and the SPAR women’s side falling agonisingly short of achieving the same scoreline against European powerhouse Austria.

There was no shortage of drama in the opening match, with the atmosphere reaching fever-pitch when SA captain Jess O’Connor scored the first goal of the tournament after seven minutes.

It then developed into a match where neither side seized complete control, but Austria did enough to build a 3-2 lead.

However, SA provided evidence of their determination when Kayla de Waal, scorer of their second goal, came within a whisker of equalling, only for her goal to be disallowed.

SA stayed in contention by forcing a penalty corner with 17 seconds left, which resulted in a penalty stroke when the Austrian players infringed inside their circle.

It was left to Tegan Fourie to level matters but the Austrian goalkeeper Stella van Rahden produced an excellent save from her firmly struck shot, leaving SA to ponder what might have been.

Skipper O’Connor was philosophical at the end of it all.

“It was bitter-sweet but at the end of the day you have got to put your chances away to win the game and we didn’t,” she said.

“So we will study that on the video and see how we can do better to take those opportunities.”

“Austria are ranked above us [world No 8 to SA’s 14] and we knew it would be tough, but I think we put up a good fight.

“In the end they took their chances and we didn’t, so they deserved the win.”

While the result was not favourable, O’Connor said the players relished the atmosphere in the arena, especially the feeling after scoring the opening goal.

The men’s clash with Australia was equally well contested, though SA lost their focus slightly in the latter half of the match after building a 2-0 cushion through Mustapha Cassiem.

Captain Jethro Eustice pointed to some defensive errors which allowed their opponents back into the game to take a 3-2 lead.

But with four minutes remaining, SA forced a penalty corner and Eustice was on hand to calmly slot the ball into the net.

The home team then piled on the pressure, but the Aussie defence stood firm.

“The game in the first half was pretty good and we managed to control things,” Eustice said.

“But we know the Australian defence is always clinical and they are good on the counter-attack.

“We started making mistakes in the third quarter which allowed them to take control, so we are a bit disappointed not to go the whole way.

“Coming back from 3-2 down to 3-3 was good, but we had a couple of chances at the end to take the result.”

Their way forward, he added, was to be more clinical in front of goal.

“There were some first-game nerves but we need to work on those connections.

“We are better now than a year ago but we need to focus on better connections in tight areas to create easier goal-scoring opportunities and to concentrate on our defensive structure.”

The SA women’s next fixture is another challenging one, this time against the Netherlands at 7pm on Monday, followed by the men’s clash with the Czech Republic at 8.10pm.