Hockey men survive rollercoaster match

Hockey men survive rollercoaster match

New Zealand certainly experienced a contrast of emotions on the first day of hockey.

In the morning, the New Zealand women scored a torrent of goals and dispatched Kenya 16-0. The world was sunny.

But in the late match, the New Zealand men found themselves on the brink of a stunning defeat by Scotland. The clouds had closed in.

The Scots scored first after six minutes and from then until halftime they made the most of their scoring opportunities and found themselves ahead 5-1.

New Zealand have a difficult pool anyway, including defending champions Australia. A loss to Scotland would have severely dented their prospects of advancing to the semi-finals.

To their credit the New Zealanders kept pressing. By three-quarter-time it was 5-2, though still the mountain seemed a formidable one to climb.

But in the final quarter Jake Smith, Hugo Inglis and Sam Hiha slotted goals within four minutes to level the score at 5-5.

Unlikely as it had seemed just a few minutes before, for the final nine minutes it was New Zealand hard on attack looking for the match-winner and the Scots scrambling madly in defence. The goal never came, despite New Zealand winning three penalty corners near the end, and it finished 5-5.

New Zealand will be wondering what happened. They had 56 percent of the possession, were on attack 64 percent of the time and had 21 shots at goal compared to Scotland’s 10.

The result – unlikely as it was – means New Zealand still have a solid chance of progressing to the semi-finals, but they won’t want another roller coaster like the Scotland match for a long time.