Hurting from the huge defeat to bitter rival Great Britain, Australia went all out against a hapless Canada to register a 6-0 victory in its last Pool A league match of the Hockey World League Finals here on Tuesday. The result, however, highlighted more problems than positives for the world champion.
It is said that statistics don’t lie. In which case, Australia coach Graham Reid should be a very concerned man.
The goalfest started early when Trent Mitton put through Daniel Beale from near the backline to score the opener in the fourth minute.
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The attempts began two minutes earlier. Australia had a massive 75 per cent possession in the game. It took more than 25 shots at the goal.
It earned an unimaginable 19 penalty corners in the match — most top tournaments see a similar number throughout the competition all teams put together. It could convert only three of them.
It was so one-sided that Australian goalkeeper Andrew Charter was often seen stretching himself without the helmet, struggling to stay alert. The ball hardly entered the Australian half. The relentless Aussie attack kept coming in waves. The Canadians struggled to put stick to ball.
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David Carter, meanwhile, was a busy man. The Canadian goalkeeper dived, lunged and leapt at every ball that came his way, warding off the desperate Australian attack including four back-to-back penalty corners. Deservedly, he was named Man of the Match despite ending on the losing side.
The Australian strikeforce of Kieran Govers, Dylan Wotherspoon, Glenn Turner and Trent Mitton was wayward. Legend Jamie Dwyer was a pale shadow of himself.
The Canadian defence, marshalled by captain Scott Tupper, took body blows but did not collapse.
The six goals that came could have been 16. It would have been by an earlier Australian team. Not today, though.
The one man who wouldn’t mind playing this Australian team would be Carlos Retegui. The Argentina coach was in the stands with his staff, observing every move made by the Australians, discussing threadbare the gameplan.
On Monday, Argentina won the battle of attrition between two teams with strong defences, defeating Olympic champion Germany 3-1 to finish second in pool B.
The 23-year old Gonzalo Peillat retained his scoring record in the competition, scoring two of the three goals. Peillat is now the top-scorer in the tournament with six goals in three games.
The result: Pool A: Australia 6 (Daniel Beale 2, Jeremy Hayward, Dylan Wotherspoon, Matthew Dawson, Kieran Govers) bt Canada 0.