Inaugural FIH Nations Cup champions South Africa will have a tough task ahead to win this edition in Poland after an opening day defeat against Austria.
Starting without skipper Dayaan Cassiem, due to travel issues, South Africa were still fancied against Austria who began life without Korper and Stanzl. It started superbly for the South Africans who produced an outstanding attack after a sublime ball from Matt Guise-Brown. Bili Ntuli was found at the end of the piece and delayed his shot perfectly for the keeper to commit and dink it over him into the net.
The South African Engine was well and truly purring and the inevitable second goal came in the sixth minute as Matt Guise-Brown fired home a scintillating drag flick and the African Olympic Qualifiers were well on their way.
To their credit the Austrian’s settled into the game and pulled a goal back through Julian Kaiser from a penalty corner. The opening quarter ended 2-1 to the Africans.
The second quarter was brilliant for the Europeans as their set piece weaponry made it count converting both their penalty corners in the quarter to take a 3-2 lead at the half time interval. Losonci had restored parity in the 20th minute before Maximilian Scholz gave Austria the lead in the 26th minute.
The third quarter saw two penalty corners that would easily find their place on a perfect.com website as first Scholz fired an unstoppable force past Kriek in goals for SA before Guise-Brown improved on it with a rocket to make it 4-3. 6 penalty corners converted out of 7 set the game up for a fantastic finish.
South Africa had chances with four penalty corners but were unable to make them count in the final chances while Keenan Horne created a great opportunity but was unable to convert and ultimately the South Africans settled for a defeat in their opener.
Keenan Horne, team captain on the day, shared his thoughts post game:
“It’s a disappointing start, we want to win the first game but having said that we know it’s the first game. We need to turn it on in the next game and go from there. I think there were too many unforced errors which hurt in the approach to build up play.”
The SA Men are next in action against fellow Olympic Qualifiers New Zealand on Monday at 18:00 local time.
by South Africa
