HOCKEY: The Hockeyroos showed resilience and grit to take a share of the spoils in a 3-3 draw with Germany on Sunday, securing the World Cup warm-up tournament title in the process as they finished ahead of the hosts on goal difference in Bremen.
South Australian Georgie Parker’s last minute equaliser was the Hockeyroos’ third of the game and came after New South Wales forward Emily Smith had levelled Tina Bachmann’s fifth minute opener and Victorian Georgia Nanascawen had cancelled out Lydia Haase’s goal for 2-2.
And there was further reason to celebrate as Australian captain Madonna Blyth became the outright second highest capped Hockeyroo in history. Playing in her 280th international, she overtook Rechelle Hawkes’ 279 games. Only Nikki Hudson’s 303 match record lies ahead for the Brisbane-born midfielder.
National coach Adam Commens said after the match, “We played some pretty good hockey and certainly created enough chances to score three goals. Germany played very well. They’re a team that’s improving all the time; they’ve had a lot of [personnel] turnover since the Olympics and played very enterprising hockey today. We’ll probably need to be better if we are to beat them in the latter stages of the World Cup.”
With just 12 days to go to the start of the tournament, Commens said, “I’ve been quite satisfied with our performances this week. As far as starts of tours go it’s been one of our better starts to a tour. It’s satisfying to win the tournament. Yesterday we played fantastic attacking hockey whereas today was a bit more of a dogfight. There was some good counter attacking play but I thought Germany kept possession better than we did.”
While a draw would be enough for the Hockeyroos, Germany required a victory to win the tournament on home turf. There was an early setback for the Hockeyroos as German veteran Tina Bachmann converted a fifth minute penalty corner to put the hosts 1-0 up but Crookwell’s Emily Smith made it 1-1 with her second in as many games less than ten minutes later.
Lydia Haase put Germany back in front but Georgia Nanscawen’s equaliser just before the break provided the perfect response from the Hockeyroos. And despite falling behind for a third time to Kristina Hillmann’s goal ten minutes into the second half, the resiliant ‘Roos refused to give up. With time running out Georgie Parker worked her magic, finding the back of the goal in the final minute.
The Hockeyroos now move on to Belgium where they will meet the Belgian women in their final official pre-World Cup Test on Tuesday (19:00 CET / 03:00 AEST Wednesday). The Australian women will play Korea on Saturday 31 May in their opening World Cup clash in The Hague. The match will be live on ABC 2.
Hockey Australia
