By the time time you read this, we will have played our second match of the Hawke's Bay Cup Women's Hockey tournament against the formidable Argentina team.
I am writing this following our opening match against Japan on Saturday evening. In the context of world rankings most would have expected
the Black Sticks, FIH ranked 4th, to account for Japan FIH ranked 10th but in the end we had to settle for a 2-all draw.
We expected Japan to come out firing in the opening quarter and while they did as expected we played our structures pretty well. They did force us into the pockets, which wasn't ideal, but we were still able to outplay them for most of the quarter.
Japan scored their opening goal after 24 minutes and repeated the dose in the 32nd minute, and from then on it was going to be tough for us as they began crowding the defence.
To the girls' credit, they stuck to their guns and fought back to score in the 50th minute, then got the equaliser just before fulltime.
