The Orange Women won – in strongly varying compositions – ten of their eleven international matches under Van Ass and played a draw once. The number of defeats is still zero, thanks in part to the great comeback after a surprising 0-2 deficit in Tuesday’s Pro League game with the United States (3-2 win).
Under Van Ass, the Orange booked big victories over Great Britain (6-0), the United States (6-0), Australia (7-2), Ireland (5-0) and China (4-0) and was among others archrival Argentina also twice in charge (3-1 and 2-0). Ten of the eleven international matches took place in the Pro League country competition, only the game against Ireland was an official friendly international match.
Best start since 1977
We have been used to more beautiful statistics from the Orange Ladies in recent years, but we still have to go far back in time to discover when the team started so energetically under a new national coach. In 1977 – 46 years ago – the Dutch national team of Huib Timmermans did even better in the first eleven official appearances: eleven resounding victories.
Under Timmermans, at the time the first male national coach of the Orange Women, the team only suffered a defeat for the first time in its twentieth international match, after nineteen victories in a row. That happened in an insignificant friendly match against Great Britain: 2-3.
Four goals per international match
What is also striking about Van Ass’s Oranje is the deluge of goals. After eleven appearances, an Orange goal could already be cheered 45 times, an average of 4.09 goals per international match. Yibbi Jansen accounted for a quarter of that production (see box below).
If we compare that with the productivity of all other national coaches in international history, only Marc Lammers’ Orange scored more in 2001: 52 goals in the first eleven matches, thanks in part to two monster victories against weak Malaysia (twice 13-0).
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by Hockey.nl
