It could have gone either way but eventually the favourites, Germany, prevailed. Their opponents in the final of the Champions Trophy here in Kuala Lumpur were Australia, whose mere presence in the final itself was a bit of a surprise. As recently as Saturday morning they were being tipped as Great Britain’s opponents in the 5th / 6th place match. Great Britain’s draw against Korea, and Australia’s 5-0 win over Germany in the last of the round-robin stage matches, propelled them into the final. As we said yesterday, we could not read too much into the result of the previous meeting but Australia proved to be stronger opponents in the final than we had suspected. Germany took an early lead with a penalty corner strike from Tibor Wiessenborn in the sixth minute. Australia managed to weather being down to ten men whilst Nathan Eglington sat out a period of suspension for a particularly agricultural tackle, and whilst both sides produced some exciting play in attack, solid defences and a good measure of luck kept the score down to the single goal for the remaining 65 minutes. If there were prizes for consistency, in a tournament where inconsistency has been the order of the day, then Germany deserve to win it and they are worthy winners of this year’s Champion’s Trophy.
A late goal by Korea threatened to deprive the European Champions, The Netherlands, of a win in the bronze medal match. Final score in that match 3-2 to the Dutch.
Final places:
- Germany
- Australia
- Netherlands
- Korea
- Spain
- Great Britain
- Pakistan
- Malaysia
Over the next two weeks the following material will be available on the TalkHockeyRadio web site.
- Images from the last four GB games, plus the final, will be available over the next few days.
- Interviews from the Champions Trophy will feature in December’s edition of TalkHockeyRadio, which will be available to download from 13/12/07.
- Our on-line magazine, HockeyTalk, will feature the Champions Trophy in the January 2008 edition, ready to download from 20/12/07.
For more details go to our web site at www.talkhockeyradio.co.uk
