It’s been a really fiery & hotly competitive afternoon of Hockey One at the Tasmanian Hockey Centre in Hobart with back-to-back opening round Saturday matches involving the Men’s and Women’s Tassie Tigers and NSW Pride. We’ll start with the men’s 3pm game and NSW were off to a fantastic start where they scored two first half goals (one off each quarter), although Tassie got one back before both teams gone into half-time with a one-goal difference (1-2).
Now both sides may have went scoreless in the 3rd but the match isn’t over just yet and at the end of the day, the script was flipped at the hands of Tassie courtesy of Jack Welch who scored a stunning 4th quarter hat-trick goal to seal his Tassie side the opening round victory by 4-3. A lot can change when one hour is not a long time to break things down with commiserations to NSW where they fired off well as said – despite some early ill-discipline; But they just couldn’t either safeguard the game or stop Welch in their tracks.
Then we move straight into the 2nd match of the afternoon involving the respective women’s teams and this time, it went down the wire via penalty shootouts once again with the opening match already been decided in that sort of fashion last night – and it turns out the Hockey Club Melbourne did win that game over the host team Adelaide Fire at MATE Stadium 3-1 when they both drew 1-1 all in normal time. Don’t forget the Melbourne team also won the opening men’s game also last night thanks to a great start with Kaide Leigh scoring the double to put the match into bed while Craig Marais helped them extend their winning, even though the Fire’s late comeback from behind unfortunately fell so short by a single goal (4-3).
Back to this match now and the first half saw NSW Pride scored three goals (only in the 2nd quarter) but Tassie also scored three goals of their own as well (only in the 3rd quarter) where both teams couldn’t find a way to settle the score when a hour is already up and both teams have one last chance to redeem themselves in penalties as it’s either win or lose for the Tigers and Pride.
Both teams got away with the penalty score sheets well while they both had issues with Tassie struggling to beat the keeper (Zoe Newman) & Mariah Williams unlucky not to wrap up her strike within the eight second rule for NSW. Fortunately for NSW, they didn’t have any other issues executing through the net with goalkeeper Newman being the hero there who stayed strong to deny Tassie another few shots behind the net – which was enough to secure the close win by 3-2 for NSW Pride.
Gotta say both teams put in such a brilliant fight as this is what Hockey One is all about across the men’s and women’s matches this afternoon with one match left tomorrow afternoon to finish off the round & six more weeks after this including the Finals weekend (also in Hobart) – it’s the Canberra Chill v Perth Thundersticks at the National Hockey Centre in Canberra.