Namibia lose shoot-out to Austria 

Namibia’s men will play out for positions 21st to 24th at the Junior Hockey World Cup in Madurai, India after losing 2-0 on penalties to Austria yesterday. 

The Namibian team, already depleted with several sick players, suffered a further setback when Matthew Lassen was yellow-carded toward the end of the third quarter and they had to play the final quarter one man down. 

Despite the setbacks Namibia matched Austria throughout a closely-contested encounter, assistant coach Randy Slabbert said. 

“It’s a tough way to lose a play-off. We did so well to stay in the match in the first and second quarters and masnaged tyo take the lead on two occasions. The team gave their all despite several players not being well both before and during the game. We unfortunately compounded our situation by playing 17 minutes a man down, again highlighting the colossal effort that was put in to stay in the match,” he said.

Austria put Namibia under a lot of early pressure, winning several short corners, but Namibia whethered the storm and started creating chances of their own. Namibia lifted the tempo by the third quarter, winning a short corner, and although they could not capitalise, they soon won another with JP Britz converting to put them 1-0 ahead. 

Austria immediately retaliated and equalised with a field goal by Benedikt Meisel two minutes later, but Namibia won a penalty when Abraham Graham was fouled by the Austrian keeper and Britz scored from the spot to put them 2-1 ahead. 

Austria, however, once again responded with a field goal by Julian Kaiser to tie the match at 2-2.

Lassen was shown a 10 minute yellow card shortly before the end of the third quarter, meaning that Namibia had to defend with 10 men for most of the final quarter. They managed to defend resolutely till the end to send the match into a sudden death shoot-out, where Austria took the honours with a 2-0 victory. 

Captain Britz said he was proud of his team. 

“I thought we played well, we did what we wanted to do and waited for our chances. We scored first, which was our goal, and then conceded straight after that, but then we went up again. Unfortunately, we got a 10-minute yellow card and then our goal was not to concede in those 10 minutes, because we were a man down. We managed to do that, but the shoot-out didnt go our way,” he said. 

“I’m very proud of the guys. I mean, half our team is not feeling well and a few of the guys are sick and are vomiting. No one of us has played in this type of environment before, with this type of food, so it’s tough on us as well, and I think the guys are managing themselves very well under the circumstances,” he added. 

Namibia’s women, meanwhile, lost 4-1 to Ireland at the Junior Women’s World Cup in Santiago on Wednesday. 

Ireland dominated from the start, taking a 3-0 lead at halftime before going 4-0 ahead, but Anthea Coetzee replied with a late consolation goal for Namibia. 

Namibia, who lost their first group match 13-0 to India on 1 December, play their final group match against Germany today. 

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