Coming up from the south coast as I did this afternoon, it was a pleasant surprise to find that Manchester was bathed in sunshine. But it did not take long for events on the pitch to bring a cloudy gloom to the Belle Vue stadium. Playing in their final pool match against Germany in the European Nations Championship, the England men’s squad will be looking back and asking “What if?” What if they had beaten the Belgians and the Belgians had not held Germany to a surprise draw? It is probably the latter which did more to sink England’s prospects. A win for the Germans would have left England with a sporting chance of reaching the semis. England’s remaining “Get out of gaol card” would have to be a win or draw against the Germans this afternoon. But beating the world champions was never a likely prospect, as it was demonstrated when Germany took a third minute lead through a field goal by Mathias Witthaus. It was Witthaus who struck again just before the break with a second goal in open play. Whilst England had their chances in the match, Bubolz in the German goal was hardly troubled. Middleton had a excellent scoring chance in the second half but was closed down by an effective German defence. Needless to say, the man of the match was probably Christopher Zeller who, although his name did not appear on the scoresheet, was always in the thick of the action. The icing on the German cake came halfway through the second half when Jan Marco Montag found the net from a penalty corner. Final score: England 0 Germany 3.
Markus Weise, the German coach, was gracious enough to say that the encounter had produced a match of semi-final quality and said he felt that English teams were becoming stronger. The fact is that the men have lost out on automatic Olympic qualification and will now have to travel to one of three tournaments in some far flung corner of the globe to battle it out for Olympic qualification, where only the winner takes the prize. England simply need to do a lot better to compete at this level of hockey and I doubt whether a betting man would be buying his air ticket to China any time soon. England’s honour now rests on the shoulders of the women who also meet Germany, this time in a semi final match. England twice beat an out-of-form German side in the World Cup back in the autumn but this looks a very much improved German side.
In the other final pool matches played today, France recorded a surprise victory over Ireland courtesy of a penalty corner conversion by Frederic Soyez the French skipper. Soyez and three of his team were sin binned during the last ten minutes of the match, which was umpired by England’s Hamish Jamson. The Belgians had a field day against the Czechs, with goals by John-John Dohmen (2), Gregory Guscassoff (2), Maxime Luyckx, and Loic Vandeweghe. The afternoon’s big match for neutral supporters was the clash between the Dutch and the Spanish. The Dutch took an early lead from a field goal by Teun de Nooijer but Spain were able to equalise shortly afterwards through a penalty corner strike by Xavier Ribas. The Dutch were 3-1 up at half time, and although the Spanish were able to pull one back in the second half, the Netherlands ran out winners, 4-2. In a day that saw nine yellow cards dished out, none of them was in this match, which I suppose proves that competitive hockey need not be anything but clean!
Our photographs today show Cristopher Zeller just before Germany’s first goal against England and Barry Middleton in the thick of the action in the England attack,
