Kookaburras Stall On The Way To Semi-finals

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday August 18, 2004

Richard Hinds

Australia 2

Argentina 2

The Australian men's hockey team hit the first pothole in what had seemed a smooth road to the semi-finals, only a late goal by star striker Jamie Dwyer giving the Kookaburras a 2-2 draw with Argentina on Tuesday in a match they dominated for long stretches and had been heavily favoured to win.

It was a frustrating game for the Australians, who had a clear edge in class and created many scoring chances, but twice fell behind after the Argentinians seized on defensive lapses. After Dwyer's opportunistic goal with only 41/2 minutes left, Australia had a couple of late chances to steal victory. However, they had to settle for a result that will increase the pressure in their final three pool games against India, South Africa and the Netherlands.

"I don't think things will resolve themselves maybe until the last evening, when we play Holland," said coach Barry Dancer of the Australians' semi-final prospects.

The statistics reflected Australia's dominance, with Argentina penetrating the Kookaburras' defensive circle only 10 times and Australia having seven penalty corners to one.

However, poor defence proved costly, with Argentina taking the lead after 80 seconds, when Mario Almada got free in the circle, and then cancelling Dwyer's equaliser with another brilliant strike by Almada late in the first half.

"We did enough to win, but I think we let ourselves down in deep defence a couple of times," Dancer said. "Their ball runners caused us a few problems, but relatively speaking I thought we had a lot better of the game. Those defensive lapses put us behind. Obviously, the pleasing thing is we coped with that and dealt with that and came back on two occasions. In the end, we created a couple of very good goal-scoring opportunities and just couldn't finish."

While the Australians were disappointed to drop two points, Dwyer again stamped himself as one of the stars of the tournament with two goals. In the first half he was on the end of a brilliantly worked penalty corner variation to score the equaliser, knocking the ball in off the goalkeeper's glove.

Then, as the Kookaburras tried desperately to find a way through Argentina's defensive wall, Dwyer pounced on a rebound after Travis Brooks's shot had been saved. With a hat-trick against New Zealand, Dwyer is now the leading scorer in the tournament with five goals.

Dancer said he was particularly pleased that Brooks had remained a scoring threat late in the match despite playing 30 minutes of the second half in hot conditions.

"He was able to create on the end of 30 minutes in the second half, and so you are talking about a guy whose energy as much as his determination provided us with an opportunity," Dancer said. "He's a creative player and you see the benefits of that."

After Dwyer's late goal, Brooks twice had a chance to hit the winner but one shot went wide and the second time he just failed to get a stick on the ball.

The Australians also had a late scare when Almada again got free, but this time he shot wide with just five seconds left on the clock.

In a style reminiscent of their country's soccer team, the Argentinians played a physical game in the first half, with two players sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes. They also spent a good deal of time writhing on the pitch and arguing with the umpires.

"I think the umpires were very unfair," said Argentinian veteran Maximiliano Caldas. "With the penalty corners, we just run the ball down and we get the penalty against us. Two times our players got shot down outside the circle, and two times there was only a hit outside the circle but no penalty corner. So I think it was poorly umpired."

Australia now play the always unpredictable India on Thursday. While generally happy with his team, Dancer believes a handful of players need to lift.

"I think there are a couple of players well down," he said. "So it's just a matter of those players getting some confidence out of today. We had three or four players well below personal-best form, so there will be some individual focus certainly out of what happened today."

© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald

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