New Zealand kept their medal hopes alive at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup tournament with a well-deserved 2-0 win over South Africa - but not without some concerns.
Speaking from Kuala Lumpur after the side's first win of the tournament, coach Kevin Towns said his team had been conceding too
many penalty corners often with a foot taking the ball.
"If we keep doing that in our remaining games against Malaysia tonight and Korea [tomorrow night] we will lose," Towns said. "But, having said that, we played well against South Africa."
Phil Burrows capped a strong move on the right involving Shaun Barnett and Darren Smith to open the scoring in the ninth minute when he blasted home from an acute angle just inside the circle.
The Black Sticks retained that lead at halftime and went further ahead early in the second spell when, from a penalty corner variation, the South African defence touched home Ryan Archibald's shot. "We had a good chance for a third goal midway through the second half, but Phil [Burrows] somehow deflected the ball away from the goal when he should have scored."
Paul Woolford, although not called on too often, had a sound game in the New Zealand goal. Barnett and Blair Hopping also had strong games.
Towns rested son Simon and Bevan Hari to give them more time to recover from injury. He expects both to play against Malaysia.
"That goal we had disallowed against India in our second game - a mistake the umpire later apologised for - may come back to haunt us. The 3-2 win we should have had could now have kept us in with a chance of making the final," Towns said.
"Our best chance now is probably to make the bronze medal game on Sunday. But only if we beat Malaysia, and that will not be easy as we saw in the recent series in New Zealand."
In the only other game yesterday, Korea beat Malaysia 4-0.
