Saturday, 3 May 2008

playoffs - day 2

only the play-off games that we are interested in now.

before we got to the pool this afternoon the nz women played australia in their semi-final and, sadly, went down 4-1. shame, but still a medal chance nonetheless.

2v3 = south africa v new zealand
we started really well off the first strike and got pretty damn close to scoring straight away. we couldn't convert the chance and the game seesawed for a couple of minutes before the locals got the early goal. we settled down after that and got into a good rhythm and got a couple of nice goals, then a third cracker just before the 1/2-time break to go into the second half 3-1 ahead.
in the second half we kept rolling on in the same manner as the first and took the game away from south africa with 3 more goals in 7 or 8 minutes. once we got a 5 goal lead it was goodnight nurse for south africa and we got another couple of sweet goals to go 8-1 up with a minute and a half to go. someone got chucked in the sin-bin and we leaked a consolation goal with less than a minute to go. final score 8-2 to us. onto the final tomorrow.

1v4 = australia v france
games do not come any closer than this cracker. scores tied at the end of regulation time. scores tied at the end of overtime and into golden goal time. crowd goes bananas.
france showed the benefit of practicing overtime uwh against colombia yesterday and got the golden goal required. the french played smart and got the puck down into the australian end of the court and played patiently waiting for a slight mistake in the aussie defence line. mistakes = goals at this level.

so quite the upset, both seeds 1 and 2 gone from the final. i'm not sure if this has ever occurred before.

i'll be pushed for time tomorrow evening, so a report on the final will have to wait until sunday. probably not before mid-morning local time. maybe later. it all depends on the quality of the function.

final at 4pm local time = 2 am sunday morning nz time. we will be wearing black togs.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

fk yeah! there must have been broken dreams everywhere, just like canada. smash the french tomorrow boys, they are rubbish

Keeping up with the Jones' said...

Nice work fellas. 8-2 is a ruthless display of finals uwh. Find that same rhythm for the final and the French will have no answer. The game is a civil 10pm here in Perth so I'll be watching for sure. Make it happen. AJ