Penalty corner whiz Matt L'Hullier was the catalyst to Indians blitzing Dalefield 7-2 in their Wellington premier division men's hockey match at the National Hockey Stadium in Wellington on Saturday.
L'Hullier, a Wellington national league rep and New Zealand development squad member, utilised his drag-flicking skills to phenomenal effect, scoring all
six of Indian's second-half goals from penalty corners after an even first half which ended with the scores level at 1-1.
Dalefield went into the match with a game plan structured around the importance of reducing the number of penalty corners conceded to an absolute minimum and they responded well to that challenge in the first half, conceding just the one in that period of play.
Unfortunately, however, the second spell was a completely different story with a combination of their own defensive errors and 50-50 refereeing calls going against them seeing Indians being given seven penalty corners in all, six of which L'Hullier converted into goals. Not helping the Dalefield cause was having two of their players sin-binned at different times, meaning they had 20 minutes where they were playing with just 10 men.
However, coach Willie Schaefer was not looking for excuses, saying that his side knew how lethal Indians could be from penalty corners and they had simply given away too many of them to keep themselves in the game.
"We knew what they could do if the defence fell apart and, in the end, we came up short in that respect," he said.
Schaefer was heartened though with Dalefield's competitiveness in general play, especially in the first half where they had much better ball retention than they had in the second, and consequently often troubled the Indians' defence.
"The first half was actually very encouraging, we were right in it then," he said. "We created at least as many scoring chances as them and the whole structure was pretty sound. It was just unfortunate it didn't stay that way."
Dane Lett and Todd Gould scored the Dalefield goals and both had solid games, as did young Michael Blackwood who made a good first to premier division play.
