Cantabs punish Otago — twice

John Daniel.
John Daniel.
Otago teams suffered sizeable losses in their opening games at the national tournament in Whangarei  during the  weekend.

The Otago women were hammered 8-0 by a slick Canterbury outfit on Saturday and yesterday the men came up against an equality polished Canterbury team, losing 6-1.

Women’s coach Nigel Ben-Gurion was struggling to find the positives from his side’s comprehensive defeat.

His team was scheduled to play Tasman in the late game yesterday and he was hoping for a much stronger showing.

"To be honest, Canterbury played against their NHL side and only lost 1-0 so they are extremely strong," Ben-Gurion.

"They are a very good, very  skilful side, a little bit above us. But we have a game against Tasman ... and they are more down to our level and we should have a better [chance] there."

Canterbury was able to get into Otago’s circle too easily and too often.

Of the eight goals it scored, six came from penalty corners.

"Our defence obviously needs to tighten up because they shouldn’t have had six PC goals. Unfortunately, we were a little bit loose in the midfield and they just cut us to bits in the middle."

Striker Finella Sweeney was one of the best for Otago and Stephanie Mann-O’Malley also had a good game.

Otago men’s coach John Daniel was more upbeat despite his side’s heavy loss.

"We held them really well for the first half but we did not quite execute our game plan quite as well as we had hoped," Daniel said.

"There was a moment where we let in three soft goals in five minutes."

Otago trailed 3-1 at halftime and was still in the match.

But a late goal in the second quarter was followed by two quick goals in the third to put victory against the defending champion  out of reach.

"It was our first real time as a team. We have not played at this level before and we trained for the intensity but training is never like the real thing and we were playing the top team.

"And they’ve had months of preparation and we’ve only had one month. But we will only get better through the week."

Otago plays Waikato today and Daniel is expecting another very tough assignment.

"There are  really no easy games in this pool. The guys are looking forward to the challenge. We know what we are capable of and we know we can execute a bit better and make the improvements we need to."

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