Great Britain head coach Jason Lee rejected suggestions that facing the Spanish in the 5th / 6th place game after losing 5-0 in their previous meet on Wednesday imposed a psychological burden on his players. “We knew what we did wrong on Wednesday, which makes it easier to deal with.”
Losing today’s match in the Champion’s Trophy here in Kuala Lumpur meant more to Lee’s side than simply losing one game. A win and the resultant 5th place finish would have given Great Britain a guaranteed place in the next Champions Trophy in Rotterdam. Great Britain had a poor start when Victor Sojo slotted in a rebound off James Fair’s pads after only six minutes. A repeat of Wednesday looked on the cards when Fair managed to block a ball on the line from a penalty corner shot by Xavier Ribas, only to see it loop over his outstretched body and drop into the goal. Despite being down 2-0 after only fourteen minutes, Great Britain never looked out of this match like they had done four days earlier, and a simple one-man stop and hit penalty corner strike by captain Ben Hawes had the power to beat Cortes in the Spanish goal to narrow the gap. It was an overtime penalty corner strike by Richard Mantell just before the break which put then sides on equal terms.
GB managed hold out under intense pressure until the last ten minutes. A penalty corner award resulted in Santi Frexia adding his name to the scoresheet, followed two minutes later by Xavier Ribas with his second, also from a corner. Final score; 4-2 to Spain.
Make no mistake – this was a creditable effort against one of the world’s top ranked sides, who were starting to find their form by the time they met Great Britain. But GB must learn from the last ten days. Lee’s team have demonstrated that they can play great hockey, but often they are let down by basic mistakes. They can do better and must do better if we are to be taken seriously as a world ranked hockey nation.
Earlier in the day, Malaysia nearly caused an upset when they came back from 2-0 down against Pakistan in the 7th/8th place match to force the game to a golden goal decider. Imran Muhammad scored in the 3rd minute to give Pakistan the 7th place.
Our photographs shows one of GB's penalty corner attempts. This one went just wide of the far post.
