KEY POINTS:
Black Sticks coach Shane McLeod has grudgingly handed out a pass mark to his team after flogging an understrength, jet-lagged Chilean side 6-0 at Whangarei's I" Rosvall Stadium.
"It was the first game back for us for a while so we were relatively happy about many aspects of the game but there were still a lot of things that we've got to tighten up - and against a stronger side, I think we might have been punished for them," he said.
There were a few signs that the Black Sticks were still in holiday mode with passes going wayward or being poorly controlled, occasionally offering the visitors the opportunity of scoring on the break - opportunities they rarely managed to create for themselves in a largely one-sided game.
The bright side for McLeod was the performance of his forwards, whose speed and skill seemed to paralyse the Chilean defenders. "Some of the bottom end skill stuff which saw balls going over the sidelines and so on wasn't acceptable but the finesse some of the forwards showed was close to where we want it to be."
Simon Child was in top form and immediately made an impact off the bench scoring the second Black Sticks goal with his first touch of the ball in the 11th minute after Phillip Burrows, another outstanding performer, had scored the first just a minute earlier.
Child scored the third to make it 3-0 at the break before two goals in the opening two minutes of the second spell finished the game off. Gareth Brooks started the rot with his first goal with Burrows scoring his second while Chile was still regrouping.
Brooks finished off the scoring with 10 minutes to go but there probably should have been more goals considering their possession.
The Chileans only had two substitutes on the bench, with the rest of the squad due tomorrow.
After a 13-hour flight which saw them arrive in Auckland just seven hours before the game, there was good reason for the team to wilt.
Chilean coach Franco Nicola promised they would be better prepared for the remaining games of the series today, tomorrow and Tuesday.
"It didn't matter we were beaten today, for us, we always prefer to play a match rather than training for a day," he said.
