Players from Argentina celebrate after beating Germany during a men’s field hockey semifinal match at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016.
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Argentina and Belgium gatecrashed the Olympic field hockey festival and reached their first men’s final together on Tuesday.
Germany defeated the United States to claim their ticket to the final four, where title holders the Netherlands now lie in wait on Wednesday.
Some hockey fans tend to pigeonhole Shea McAleese as a player in the German mould but, it seems, regrettably the Black Sticks men desperately needed to clone a few more of the Hawke’s Bay worldwide yesterday morning to flip the Rio Olympics tournament on its head.
Olympics women’s field hockey just finished its quarterfinal stage with the USA team dreams of a medal at the Olympics getting shattered with Germany beating them 2-1. We never really were in the race.
Three goals in 20 minutes for the Kiwis helped secure their place in the semi-finals, with only a late goal from Kathryn Slattery, her second of the match, giving the Australian women, led by central west products Edwina Bone (Orange) and Mariah Williams (Parkes) a glimmer of hope. Argentina kept the pressure on and pushed the lead to 5-0, killing any chances of a rally.
“The strength of the program will continue to grow”, Parnham said.
“I played this game a few times in my head over the night, but to come out with the win was incredible”, she told NZ Newswire.
“Anita’s flick composed us a little bit, and I told the girls just to stick to our game plan”.
“They came out and scored their first penalty corner and that’s it, they got on a roll”, Blyth said.
When the Netherlands moved ahead 3-0, after a penalty corner popped up off an Argentine defender and Kelly Jonker whipped in the ball, the result seemed certain. “He’s a world-class striker, no doubt about it”.
Hauke said the Germans might have waited too long to play the care-free style that spurred the previous comebacks. “When I was working with other teams, we would always see those as big threats of the United States of America, and when you see it firsthand, you see it for what it is”.
“Fair cop. We choked.if that’s how you want to put it”. “You can’t do it every day”.
After Bakker’s early goal, Australia dominated possession in the second period, but the Netherlands consistently made good defensive plays in the circle.
“This is insane”, midfielder Lucas Rey said.
Moritz Furste and Christopher Ruhr scored late consolation strikes for Germany. “Splattering, spluttering, we couldn’t get any really flow (in the competition), and today we just played against an wonderful Dutch team”. “We were trying to be focused on today, and now we must do that again”.
“It’s a big chance to get a medal from the Olympic Games”, he said.
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She said she would keep an open mind about the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games but said: “I think my body is getting older by the minute”.
