The final game of the big month of International Hockey in Perth ends right here today at Curtin University between the Hockeyroos v Japan, even though the women’s four-team series winner already went to China after their 4-1 win v Japan last night that capped off their unbeaten run to the tournament including from last Sunday’s 2-2 draw with the Hockeyroos.
Hockeyroos at last found the early lead where they usually score in the later stages thanks to a successful penalty goal by Clare Colwill while dominating the pitch with a 1-0 lead going into half-time. Then they went on to follow up with back-to-back counter attacking goals despite seeing some ill-discipline here and there by both sides – one was by Rosie Malone after Japan struggled to find someone at their own end and another was Maddy Brooks off the back of a tap and go play where she found Malone in the middle with the pass as the ball might have deflected by the Japanese keeper but Brooks fortunately found the clean finish to the net. In the end, the Hockeyroos were glad to finish off their month of April here with the win 3-0.
As said, great to see the Hockeyroos step up a bit having got away with the early penalty goal (1st quarter) before they went all in on the counter with back-to-back goals in the 2nd half or each of the last two quarters. What they can do something better though is make the most out of their attacking executions where hit and misses were there despite posing a decent threat in the final third. It might be okay when playing against a lower opposition like Japan but not against the best of the rest teams like China & the Netherlands. They need to better get it going right from the very start and surely we’ll see them score more often with a good lead in the middle. And on Japan, they were lucky to get away from most of the Hockeyroos missed shot on goal targets as the first half was mostly quiet even though they were 1-0 down by half-time. It made them spot the Hockeyroos attackers well defensively, having gave them a hard time like it was in the first game last Saturday. But still, they are still very limited in the way they attack who only scored just the one goal in this tournament (yesterday v China) other than playing Australia A. They might have almost scored that was so unlucky when they got the chance after the break but then not so much on a regularly as Japan need to group things together & score goals that would mean winning games.
Well that’s it from here as we had a great month of International Hockey at our own backyard in Perth. It began with a 5-0 winning whitewash by our men’s Kookaburras team fair and square v India. Yes, things aren’t exactly the same by the Hockeyroos when going up against a tough Chinese opposition whose coach is also Aussie and calls the Netherlands home, but still they had some moments with some wins v Japan while getting the chance to play against our up and coming youngsters via the Australia A team. Now let’s hope the Kookaburras finish off the last leg of the FIH Pro League campaign almost if not all being undefeated, while Hockeyroos look to improve against the likes of Argentina and Germany as they will both back in a month’s time on what is about to be a long stay in Europe with the Paris Olympics not far away in July-August.
