South Africa (SA) took an unbeatable 2-0 lead after winning the first two matches of their women’s field hockey test series against Namibia in Cape Town on Tuesday.
With only two test matches remaining, Namibia cannot win the series any more, but they did show some improvement over the first two matches.
SA won the opening test on Monday 4-0, but then tightened up their defence to lose 2-0 in the second test the next day.
On Monday, SA came out attacking from the onset but some fine saves by Namibian goalkeeper Petro Stoffberg initially kept them at bay.
Namibia’s defence finally wilted at the end of the first quarter when Kayle de Waal put SA ahead with a field goal while Hannah Pearce made it 2-0 from a short corner shortly after.
Namibia managed to keep SA at bay in the second quarter but another short corner goal by Pearce in the third quarter put SA 3-0 up, while a field goal by Ntsopa Mokoena in the final quarter sealed a comfortable win for SA.
The next day, South Africa once again had most of the possession, but Namibia played much deeper and frustrated SA for most of the match.
SA took an early lead when Pearce scored from a short corner, but Namibia managed to keep them at bay until the third quarter when a field goal by De Waal made the final score 2-0.
Namibia even managed to win a few short corners of their own but failed to convert them.
After the match Namibia coach Trevor Cormack said it was a tough match.
“It’s hard to defend against a team like SA – they come at you all the time but we just held out and I’m very proud of the girls at the back. We changed our structure a bit, video footage is an amazing thing and we used that to good effect.
“I think we got some more circle entries today, more than we did last time, so if we had converted, it could have been even closer,” he said.
“We are always expecting teams that play us to press us quite hard but we have a lot of experience at the back, we have a solid defensive structure at the back, and they seemed to hold it out so now we just need the young ones up front to score,” he added.
SA coach Zondi Inky said they can do better.
“I’m happy with the result but our lack of conversion when we got into the attacking area was a bit frustrating, we just don’t have enough quality and we talked about that now, we need to be better at that,” he said, adding that they would mix up their attacking options to try and break down Namibia’s defence in the remaining two tests.
“I think we can break them down with the variance of our passing actions. We got a bit one-dimensional in terms of playing the ball in the same areas all the time, and our transfer speed around the back four wasn’t good enough either, but credit to them, they came out with a much more rigid, structured plan, so we need to be better next time,” he said.
The final two tests take place at 17h00 today and at 14h00 tomorrow.
