Two rounds down and plenty more to come for the Vantage Blacks Sticks at the Vantage Hawke's Bay Festival of Hockey.
First up we met Japan who are ranked 11th in the world. We were very disappointed with the 2 -1 loss in this match. It was certainly not the way we wanted to start the tournament. And it wasn't only the loss that was disappointing, but it was more the way we played.
Japan is very strong in defence. We do tend to struggle against them because of the way they defend in numbers and get plenty of players behind the ball. Obviously we like to play fast hockey and they do a very good job at sinking back and preventing us from getting in behind their defensive line.
In the first half we found it difficult to expose them at the back, but in the second half we did move the ball better and got in behind them but weren't able to convert the chances we created. The final 10 minutes was extremely exciting as first we levelled the match only to concede the winning goal with time almost up.
In our second round match against Australia we trailed by one goal for most of the match. However in the 58th minute we capped off a really nice passage of play with a goal to Sam Harrison that gave us a 1-1 draw with our transtasman neighbours.