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    A last minute goal! It came for... England. Well, it's hard enough to defend a penalty corner at the top level in normal circumstances, practically impossible without a padded up goalie. To rub salt into the wound, it was ex-Ireland player Mark Gleghorne who scored.

    And with that it's full-time at 4-2. England go through, China go through and Ireland go out. The latter two of those are a bit sad for the tournament and the sport. It sucks away some of the momentum created in the summer.

    Comment


      There is still 20+ minutes to go in the Netherlands-Pakistan match, but the situation is now pretty well fully clarified. That game is 3-1 to the Dutch, which will be enough to send them through in second and is nowhere near the eight goal defeat required to eliminate Pakistan and put Malaysia into the crossovers instead.

      This will be the crossover line-up with dates and times in GMT:-
      England vs New Zealand - 10th Dec, 11:15
      Belgium vs Pakistan - 11th Dec, 11:15
      France vs China - 10th Dec, 13:30
      Netherlands vs Canada - 11th Dec, 13:30

      Leading to the following QFs:-
      Argentina vs England or New Zealand - 12th Dec, 11:15
      Germany vs Belgium or Pakistan - 13th Dec, 13:30
      Australia vs France or China - 12th Dec, 13:30
      India vs Netherlands or Canada - 13th Dec, 11:15

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        England 2-0 New Zealand (FT)

        Comment


          England have just beaten Olympic Champions and World No.2 side Argentina 3-2 to make Saturday's Semi-Finals.

          Goals went thus:-

          1st Quarter
          0-1 Gonzalo Peillat penalty corner, initial shot saved by George Pinner but then he lost his balance backwards and arsed the ball into his own net!
          1-1 Brilliant dribble by MoM Liam Ansell past three or four players created the space for Barry Middleton to shoot accurately across Juan Manuel Vivaldi and into the far corner.

          3rd Quarter
          2-1 Aerial ball forward in the final minute is miss-trapped by an Argentine defender and runs loose to Will Canlan, who fires past Vivaldi on his near post.

          4th Quarter
          2-2 Another Penalty Corner goal for Peillat, this one squeezing through between Pinner's side and arm/stick.
          3-2 Another mess in the Argentina defence. The ball pops up over head height from a misjudged touch by a defensive stick. Harry Martin brings it sort of down, and with the ball still bouncing pokes goalwards much early than Vivaldi expected.


          The match ended with Argentina down to nine men after two quick yellow cards. However England got a yellow of their own with 6 seconds left. This gave Peillat a free hit which he fired into the circle and a forward got his stick to just in front of Pinner. That sort of thing can often lead to a goal, but Pinner smothered.

          On the stats, England deserved the win. More possession, more circle penetrations and more shots. They also hit the post through Ansell during the second half. They do need to work on their penalty corner conversion though (0/4 to Argentina's 2/5).


          The other QFs all follow the finishing positions in the pools as each 2nd place team beat the side who ended up 3rd. That means France(!) are into the last eight. They take on Australia in the next match.

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            The commentator just gave some stats about the Australians. They last lost a game in a World Cup in 2010 (3-2 vs England in a pool game, they went on to top the group and win the Trophy anyway). Since then they have played 16, won 16, scored 70, conceded 10. It would be an astronomical shock if France, playing in their first World Cup in 28 years, their third overall were to end that run.
            I could also say playing in their first ever World Cup Quarter-Final, but actually this is the first ever Men's Hockey World Cup to incorporate Quarter-Finals, so that is true of Australia as well! France did finish 7th (of 12) in both their previous World Cup appearances, which is the equivalent of a losing QF.

            Australia hit the inside of the post inside the first minute, the ball flashing across the goalline and out rather than in...

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              Semi Finals today. The first game, England vs Belgium, is underway shortly. Then it's Australia vs Netherlands (who knocked out hosts India in the QFs).

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                It's half-time in the first game and England are getting rather outplayed here. 2-0 to Belgium, who have also hit the bar and missed an open goal. England, by contrast, have barely been in the Belgium circle and have not created a single chance that I can recall.

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                  Oof, 6-0.

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                    So I wrote a long reply to this yesterday, and then deleted it accidentally trying to edit it. Dang.

                    In summary, it was something like this:-

                    Yeah, 6-0. And that was about right. Belgium were streets ahead of England. They play well in Semis, having also got to the Olympic gold medal match two years ago. In fact, they have never lost a major semi to my knowledge, whilst this is the third World Cup Semi in a row that England have been beaten in.

                    In the other Semi-Final, the Dutch went 2-0 up, but Australia pulled one back and then equalised in the very last minute of the match. That sent it to penalty shuffles (Hockey seems to have abandoned extra-time as a concept), which the Dutch won 4-3. End of an era then as Australia had won the last two tournaments, including beating the Dutch 6-1 in the Final on Dutch soil four years ago.

                    That makes today's two games rather spicy, as as well as being for medals they are also two intensity sporting rivalries. The bronze medal match is England-Australia, and the one for the right to be called World Champions is Belgium-Netherlands. The games are at 11:00 and 13:30 respectively UK time.

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                      I'll risk a prediction - England won't get a medal. They were 3-0 down to Australia within 20 minutes, and though no more have been added yet that is only just, Australia just hit the post with their player already celebrating, thinking he had a fourth. It's now half-time and Danny Kerry has significant work to do to prevent things getting worse, let alone finding a way to recover.

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                        Whatever he said hasn't worked...

                        2nd minute of 2nd half. Penalty corner, initial shot saved, rebound put home. 4-0.
                        4th minute. Break down left, worked into circle, 'keeper round. 5-0.
                        Also 4th minute. England take centre. Pass it. Miss the trap. Australia pick up the loose ball, burst into circle and chip the 'keeper. 6-0. After less than 35 minutes play.

                        This could be double figures!

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                          It wasn't quite that bad. Just eight. England even got a (little) consolation in the third quarter, so 8-1 overall. That is comfortably England's heaviest ever defeat against Australia.

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                            Argh! Dutch TV live streams this final over the internet, but the broadcast is region limited and I am in Germany right now. German TV live streams some useless winter sports instead. Who the fish wants to see the Biathlon world cup?

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                              Belgium looking marginally better so far.

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                                Still scoreless after the first quarter. My stream is running via some random proxy in another country, and it has deteriorated to such a degree that not enough pixels are available to display the ball. It's a challenge, to watch this.

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                                  I would go with that as well, though the Dutch did finish the first half on the front foot.

                                  I thought Belgium losing their referral on the second penalty corner was very harsh. It looked like a Belgium stick then a Dutch one to me, with the Dutch stick being the one to lift the ball dangerously.

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                                    First half is over, and there is very little to separate these two teams. The Netherlands have had two penalty corners versus zero for Belgium, but it's still scoreless.

                                    edit: yes, that referral decision seemed wrong. I have only seen one camera angle, and it did seem as if the Belgian defender hit the ball first, before the Dutch attacker lifted the ball up. Maybe it came off the Belgian's stick again, or maybe the referee just screwed up.

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                                      It finished goalless (first World Cup Final this has happened to). Do the Shuffle.

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                                        Equal possession, equal #shots, one more circle penetration for Belgium, two more penalty corners for the Netherlands. Extremely tight game. Shootouts it is, then.

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                                          I don't think that referrals should carry over to the shootout. That's just silly.

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                                            I also don't think that the referee should have fucked that up in the first place, but yeah.

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                                              Well, that was a bit of a farce at the end. Good on Belgium, though.

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                                                I think the referrals reset at the start of the shoot-out, sort of like a Tennis tie-break. So Belgium could have referred if they had needed to.

                                                I don't blame the umps for missing the referred foot. That sort of thing is very hard to spot in real time from their angles.

                                                It does interfere with the emotion somewhat. Impressive of van Aubel to come out and score what proved to be the winner just seconds after he had been jumping around with his teammates thinking they had already won.

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                                                  Some rule changes coming:
                                                  http://fih.ch/news/amendments-to-fih...on-1-january/#

                                                  Which England Hockey don't appear to be completely sold on:
                                                  http://www.englandhockey.co.uk/news....ges&section=22

                                                  "The changes proposed by the FIH have far reaching implications for the grass roots of hockey and therefore we intend to seek clarification on the rationale behind the decision as well as understand the potential impact of the rule changes amongst participants and officials at all levels. We will communicate more about this in early 2019."

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                                                    Speaking as a grassroots player and also umpire, and mostly with my umpiring hat on:-

                                                    Four quarters
                                                    Not necessarily a bad idea per se, but stopping time repeatedly without central timekeeping will be a nightmare and often forgotten about. Currently the only times the watch is (meant to be) stopped are injuries, umpiring pauses to discuss with each other or inform the skippers of issues, and penalty flicks. On the later, I can remember countless occasions when one of the umpires has failed to stop their watch when a flick is awarded. Too much else to think about at that time. Rarer, but not unknown, are the occasions when a umpire forgets to restart their watch afterwards. Neither is helpful.
                                                    Reducing the technical length of the match to 60 minutes doesn't reduce the amount of actual playing time only if the Umps stop time for every short corner. Which they won't.

                                                    Oh, and from a pitch bookings point of view (I also do this), having games that don't take 75 minutes (35 + 35 + 5 for half-time) plus a little bit for injuries/stopapges is also a nightmare. A game with 6 penalties corners might last 75 minutes (15 + 2 + 15 + 5 + 15 + 2 + 15 + 6), a game with 20+ (as one-sided affairs at lower levels often are) could be a whole 15 minutes longer than that. With clubs often having only one astroturf so needing to fit games in back-to-back across a Saturday, 1.5 hour slots have generally been considered long enough to give time for the two sides to warm-up and have some contingency for injury. That would no longer be the case with international style timings.

                                                    No more kicking backs
                                                    Barely relevant at grass roots level. Probably actually helpful, as it means that a bib/helmet for the kicking back isn't needed.

                                                    Free-hits within 5m of the circle
                                                    Actually the rule now, so this is just a clarification. It will make Umpires lives hard, though - it demands that Umps remember which players were inside the circle but within 5m when the free-hit so awarded, so are allowed to shadow. The difficulty of that is why the application of the rule devolved to let all defenders encroach on the 5m as long as they were inside the circle.

                                                    Free-hits in defensive circle
                                                    This was tried, and failed, only five years ago IIRC. Or it might have been for balls over the backline, but that is effectively the same thing. The problems it caused then with people not being ready and getting hit and injured will recur.

                                                    PCs are over when the ball leaves circle for the second time
                                                    Stopping time on the awarding of a corner makes this pointless (it used to be that halves extended to allow a corner to be played out), so understandable that it has been deleted.

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