You didn’t have to have a very long memory to remember what
happened approximately 12 months ago on the very same pitch when South Africa
beat Great Britain in the Investec London Cup.
The defeat was put down to some serious injury problems that Great
Britain was suffering in the run-up to the Olympics. And the South Africans had
played out of their socks, and generally enjoyed a good tournament.
So, here we are at the Investec Women’s World League Semi
Finals in London, with a fresh and largely untried England team facing South
Africa. Actually, they did very well.
Although the inexperienced showed through occasionally, it was a promising
effort. When South Africa were given too
much sight of the England goal, Maddie Hinch was usually there to clean up,
performing a number of world class saves.
England needed a few minutes to settle to their task, but 22
minutes into the match Susie Gilbert opened the scoring from open play. Six minutes later one of the crop of fresh
blood in the side, Lily Owsley, proved the wisdom of her selection by giving
England their second.
A South African penalty corner on the cusp of half time saw
their corner specialist, Piete Coetzee, put the ball in the back of the net,
and you could almost sense a groan around the University of Westminster ground.
England had sometimes been living dangerously. Was this the start of a slide?
Any fears were needless, as four minutes into the second
half Alex Danson athletically got on to the end of a cross and buried it into
the South African net – a goal that was so good that anyone in the crowd who
blinked would have missed it.
England seemed to be well in control now and a penalty
corner in the dying minutes of the match saw another newcomer, Giselle Ainsley,
convert from a penalty corner. Final
score 4-1 to England.
South Africa were not the team we had seen 12 months ago,
and seemed unable to capitalise on the territorial advantage which they enjoyed
for long stretches of the game. England s not quite the finished article yet,
but it was a good start. And there will be bigger tests in this tournament,
such as Australia, who they meet at 5 pm today (Sunday).
In the other matches there were no surpises at the outcomes,
although Italy proved a sterner test for China than one might have expected. Valetina
Braconi’s equaliser mid way through the second half rattled the Chinese, who
had Qianwen Xuan on the naughty seat at the time. As you often see with the
teams outside of the top echelons, Italy don’t do reverse, but China were often
guilty of the same thing. Final score
2-1 to China.
The was a second surprise result when Argentina had to wait
until the 68th minute to score the sole goal of the match against
the USA. Argentina must be the favourites to win the tournament, so perhaps it
was just a matter of opening night nerves for the South Americans.
There were no surprises in the match between Australia and
Spain, other than the length of time it took Australia to find the net. Going
into half time 1-0 up, the Aussies scored three times in the second half and
were gifted an own goal to finish the match 5-0.
The final in the other World
League tournament in Rotterdam was decided on a shoot out after the match
finished at 1-1 in normal time. The shoot out seemed to be going OK for both
sides after three attempts each, with two goals scored by both The Netherlands
and Germany. But The Netherland’s Carlien Dirkse Van Den Heuval fluffed her
attempt, and the shoot out ended 3-4 in favour of the Germans.
The bronze medal match also had to be decided on a shoot out
after the game between New Zealand and Korea ended 3-3 in normal time. Korea
got off to the worst possible start, failing to score from the first two
attempts. But nerves must have got to the Kiwis as they failed in their fourth
and fifth attempts, whilst Korea scored continually after their bad start, and
Korea took the bronze 2-3 in the shoot out.
In the lower placed matches, India beat Chile 2-1 for
seventh place, and Japan beat Belgium 3-1 for fifth place.
