Australia tactically outplay Spain 2-0; South Africa beat Pakistan 4-3

Australia’s priorities were clear — they wanted a win more than a surfeit of goals.

Having taken care of the goal averages with a 12-0 win over South Africa in their previous match, they notched up a 2-0 victory over Spain in a tight game here on Saturday for their third win in the FIH Hero Honda World Cup.

Having started with a loss to England in the opening match, they beat India and South Africa with consummate ease, but it was not so against Beijing Olympic finalists Spain. They clung on to a one-goal lead for most of the match, even as the Spaniards wasted a number of penalty-corners in the first game of the fourth set of pool B matches.

Luke Doerner, who had struck four goals in their thrashing of South Africa, unleashed a cracking first-timer to put Australia ahead in the 20th minute. The other goal came through Glenn Turner, in a co-ordinated move of short-passes with Robert Hammond and Matthew Butturini in the 50th.

Spain got four penalty-corners in each session, but failed to complete the set-piece action in two of them, while goalkeeper Nathan Burgers made superb saves on two others.

“We were cautious in the first half because we did not want to concede early goals. We picked up the pace in the second session and were looking for goals after we went 1-0 up. It is good to notch up another win but we are not going to let up in the last match,” said captain Jamie Dwyer.

In their last match, Australia take on Pakistan, who were surprisingly outplayed by South Africa. The result meant that both teams went out of reckoning for the semifinals with only one win each from four.

Pakistan led 1-0 at half-time on the strength of Rehan Butt’s goal but South Africa called the shots in the second session, the eventual score-line of 4-3 not giving the correct picture of their dominance.

The Pakistani forwards, especially Shakeel Abbasi and Butt, failed to show co-ordination and the goals were naturally hard to come by. After a Sohail Abbas penalty-corner conversion was ruled out with a referral, Gareth Carr equalised just three minutes into the second session off a penalty corner. Ian Haley pushed in another one four minutes later, but goals from Wade Paton and Marvin Harper virtually sealed the issue.

It seemed, Pakistan also lost the plot in the midfield midway into the second session and a late charge gave hope of reducing the margin rather than turning the tables.

Muhammad Imran got one back for Pakistan in the dying minutes, and then a penalty-corner at the stroke of full time led to two others. Waseem Ahmed converted the third one to reduce the margin, but the four-time champions knew by then that it was little consolation for their third loss.

“I thought we were unlucky. Had that goal not been disallowed, things would have been different. We were certainly not expecting to lose today,” Abbas said after the match.