NZ hockey women to play for bronze

The New Zealand women’s hockey team had to bow to Great Britain today in their much-awaited semi-final match.

The British made the most of their chances and won 3-0.

In the first half especially, New Zealand had plenty of opportunities and will rue their inability to convert any of their four corners in that time.

Britain proved much more effective at pouncing on their chances. Alex Danson slotted a penalty corner in the 22^nd minute to open the scoring, then Helen Richardson-Walsh and Danson converted penalty strokes early in the final quarter to put the issue beyond doubt.

The New Zealand cause wasn’t helped by the yellow card awarded to captain Kayla Whitelock after 48 minutes – she had been given a green card early in the match.

There was little chance of New Zealand with only 10 players scoring several goals in the dying minutes.

So New Zealand lose again to Great Britain at the Olympics. The two sides met in the bronze medal match in 2012 and the British won that one 3-1.

New Zealand now go into a bronze medal match against Germany, who lost a shootout in their semi-final to the defending champions the Netherlands 4-3.

New Zealand coach Mark Hager was not overly impressed with his team’s performance today.

“We had too many people dribbling the ball and I thought not playing as a team tonight and that’s going to hurt you,” he said.

“Tactically they outsmarted us. As the game went on we didn’t play as a team and we started to play even more as individuals. We had a couple of chances, but I don’t think we played the way we should have played - we're a better side than that.”

Hager felt New Zealand had fallen short in the front third, not making the most of their goal-scoring chances.

“Now we either go home with nothing like four years ago or we can go home with a bronze medal.”

Whitelock said New Zealand were on the back foot from the start and felt the Great Britain midfield had dominated.

Looking ahead to the bronze medal match with Germany, she said the Germans were a very structured side. “We're going to have make sure we move the ball around and don’t go into those one-on-one battles.

“We got caught up against them in our pool game and lost 2-1. We don’t want to do that again - we really want to come away with a medal.”