The New Zealand Black Sticks elebrate their winning goal against Australia during their hockey pool match at the London Olympics. Source / Brett Phibbs
New Zealand could be forgiven for wanting to celebrate long and hard. Wins at the Olympics against Australia don't come around every day - or any day in the case of the Black Sticks, who had played four, lost four until tonight's shock 1-0 victory.
Such is the Olympic schedule
however, that their celebration will be a bit of match analysis, the odd flea in their ear from coach Mark Hager and an immediate switch of focus to Tuesday's opponents, South Africa.
"We've got to drop this game and focus on South Africa because it's a quick tournament," speedster Anita Punt said. "This game's gone. We'll take a few quick points that we can work on and start planning for South Africa because they use a similar sort of press to Australia.
"We'll be going home and watching clips on South Africa. That has to be our focus."
Still, they can take some satisfaction from driving their transtasman neighbours to distraction, scoring early off a Cathryn Finlayson scrambled effort, which settled any nerves they might have brought into the match.
