Anita Punt: We just need to get the basics right

Anita Punt

By the time time you read this, we will have played our second match of the Hawke's Bay Cup Women's Hockey tournament against the formidable Argentina team.

I am writing this following our opening match against Japan on Saturday evening. In the context of world rankings most would have expected the Black Sticks, FIH ranked 4th, to account for Japan FIH ranked 10th but in the end we had to settle for a 2-all draw.

We expected Japan to come out firing in the opening quarter and while they did as expected we played our structures pretty well. They did force us into the pockets, which wasn't ideal, but we were still able to outplay them for most of the quarter.

Japan scored their opening goal after 24 minutes and repeated the dose in the 32nd minute, and from then on it was going to be tough for us as they began crowding the defence.

To the girls' credit, they stuck to their guns and fought back to score in the 50th minute, then got the equaliser just before fulltime.

The Asian teams all seem to play to a similar pattern, where they crowd the defence when they are a goal up. This is not new but it does make it very difficult to get clean shots away and score goals.

The team was extremely disappointed at the two lapses in defence which led to goals in the first half of a game that we really needed to win. With their world ranking being so much lower than ours, we were expected to win, but credit should go to Japan as they have stepped up a lot in their competitiveness in recent times. We lost to them in Auckland during the Hawke's Bay Cup warm-up series but we just need to get the basics right and the results will come our way.

Today is a day off and I guess it will be time to take stock of where we are at in the tournament. We still have one round robin match to come when we meet Korea tomorrow and then it's on to the quarter-finals on Thursday. We love being back in the Bay. It feels a little like home now that the rain has gone and the girls look forward to more strong home support for the upcoming matches.