Ashley Jackson puts England into the EuroHockey Nations Championship’s semi-final in Germany
Ashley Jackson’s exhilarating hat-trick led the English athletes into the Semi-final of the EuroHockey Championship as they flayed the French outfits by 8-1 in a highly entertaining game, their last Pool B match in the EuroHockey Nations Championship (Men)
played at Warsteiner HockeyPark in Monchengladbach, Germany on Wednesday, August 24.
The game was played in a highly amusing environment and eventually proved a one-sided show by the English athletes who dominated the entire match scoring eight goals, three in the first thirty five minutes and five in the second part of the game, while their
opponents could make a single strike in the allotted time of seventy minutes.
“We scored from our first penalty corner and it was more or less ‘job done’ by half time. I was always convinced we would be more successful with penalty corners at both ends of the pitch by the time we came to the tournament and it’s proving to be the case. It’s
pleasing that we’re scoring lots of open play goals too. We’re in charge of our own destiny now. There’s not a team here that we don’t feel we can beat if we play to our best,” Jason Lee, the coach of the English men’s hockey team, stated his views after
the match.
The English started the match with a lot of aggression and took the early lead just eight minutes into the game when Ashley Jackson scored the first goal in the 8th minute, for England and for him as well. The English doubled their lead midway
through the first half when Richard Alexander scored a wonderful field goal in the 15th minute. The French showed some efforts in the defence but that were not enough to tackle the English swift attacks as they scored their third goal just before
the interval. The scorer was once again Ashley Jackson who converted a penalty corner into goal in the 30th minute.
The second half started with an early action by France as they ticked the scoreboard in the 42nd minute with Fabien Magner but the English were quick in their scoring that they added two more goals in just two minutes when James Tindall scored
in the 44th minute while Richard Alexander scored his second in the 46th minute. Adam Dixon also contributed in the victory by scoring a beautiful field goal in the 52nd minute before Ashley Jackson completed his hat-trick
on a drag flick in the 56th minute. The eighth and the last English goal was scored by James Tindall, his second of the match, in the 58th minute. England will now face Germany in the semi-final on Friday, August 26.
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