Southern women's under-21 coach Ben Varkalis lauded his side's defensive effort at the McMillan Hockey Centre last night.
Southern was well-beaten 3-0 by a clinical North Harbour side but the final margin could and probably should have been a lot worse.
The visitors appeared fitter, faster and a lot more skilful but were kept scoreless during second period.
Harbour poured forward looking to add to the three goals it scored in the opening 35 minutes but was denied by some scrambling defence.
Unbelievably, Southern defended eight second-half penalty corners and goalie Ginny Wilson pulled off some wonderful saves. She had good support from Leah Butt and Hannah Ostick, who got through a mountain of work on defence.
‘‘In the first half we were fairly poor in terms of our work off the ball, which meant we weren't able to get out of our half effectively,'' Varkalis said.
‘‘At the half time break we asked them to get back to how they have been playing over the last couple of days and I thought the second half was much better.
‘‘We still had to defend but I thought they were tougher and more courageous. And we kept them clean; it was a 0-0 second half.''
Impressive striker Samantha Polovnikoff opened the scoring in the fourth minute, when the ball bobbled her way and she thumped the shot past Wilson.
She was unmarked then and unmarked again 15 minutes later when she helped set up the second goal. She found herself open on the left wing and carved off the yards before passing to Courtney Winterbottom, who drilled the shot from the edge of the circle.
Kayla Reed deflected a cross into the net four minutes later to make it 3-0 and that was the scoring done for the night.
Southern managed one shot on goal in the second half, from Maddi McLean, and it was blocked well before it got anywhere near the goalie. In the other women's games, Auckland beat Capital 4-0 and Central beat Canterbury 2-1. Midlands leads the standings with three wins from four games.
In the men's competition, Southern prevailed 3-0 against North Harbour but had to endure a third consecutive shootout after the teams were locked 0-0 at fulltime.
Practice obviously makes perfect, because the home team scored all three attempts, while Southern keeper Jack Waddell came up with three saves.
In the earlier game, Capital trailed Auckland 2-0 but rallied to win 5-3, while Canterbury thrashed Central 6-0 and is undefeated in five games.
