Lapses Let Kookaburras Down
The Age
Wednesday August 18, 2004
A late goal by star striker Jamie Dwyer gave the Kookaburras a 2-2 draw with Argentina yesterday in a match that the Australians 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 4 1/2 minutes left, Australia had a couple of late chances to steal victory. But, it instead had to settle for a result that will increase the pressure in its final three pool games, against India, South Africa and the Netherlands."I don't know if things will resolve themselves maybe until the last evening when we play Holland," said coach Barry Dancer of the Australians' semi-final prospects. "Our expectation is these sorts of things will happen and we don't try to fit these things together yet - we just concentrate on our games."The statistics reflected Australia's dominance. Argentina penetrated the Kookaburras' defensive circle just 10 times and Australia had seven penalty corners to one. But, poor defence proved costly, with Argentina taking the lead after just 80 seconds when Mario Almada got free in the circle, then cancelling Dwyer's equaliser with another brilliant strike by Almado late in the first half."We did enough to win, but I think we let ourselves down in defence a couple of times," said Dancer. "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' shot had been saved. With a hat-trick against New Zealand, Dwyer is now the leading scorer in the tournament with five goals. Dancer 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," said Dancer. "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 on the clock.In a style reminiscent of their soccer team, the Argentinians had 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 umpires."I think the umpires were very unfair," said Argentinian veteran Maximilliano 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 plays the unpredictable India tomorrow. 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 on what happened today."
© 2004 The Age