Australian Capital Territory cruise past NT by 2-1 in U-21 National Hockey Championship
Steph Kindon and Naomi Evans scored one goal apiece and had an assist to carry Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to a 2-1 win over Northern Territory (NT) in the classification play of the U-21 National Hockey Championship. The cliff-hanging fixture was
held at the National Hockey Centre in Lyneham, Canberra, last week.
ACT and NT won only a single game out of total seven, but they have differences over the draws and defeats. The ACT squad levelled the results in a couple of games, while remained unsuccessful in the four and NT faced defeats in the five, while levelled
only one fixture.
Anthony Farry, the coach of the ACT, said that they were greatly pleased with the win, but they failed to show their real worth. He stated, “We have improved a lot since we played them last week, they are coming off a high after beating one of the higher
ranked teams in SA so it will be a really good match. We will have to concentrate on our composure in defence and just continue to build on the things we have been working on all week.”
Regardless of the consequences, both ACT and NT opened up the game at slow speed. One of the crucial moments came, when Juanita McDonald of ACT managed to take the ball inside the 25-yard D-line and passed it to Steph Kindon. She was standing in front of
the cage and tapped it easily into the goal of NT in the 35th minute of the play. It was a point which put the Northern team under immense pressure. Despite several efforts, they failed to get scoring in the first thirty-five minutes of the game.
Both the squads moved into the second half of play with ACT hanging on a single goal lead, 1-0.
The second round started with the same pace and made penetrations against each other in the very early minutes. However, the Northern Territory team had some edges and carried out some brilliant attacks against ACT side. They not only denied the attacks,
but converted them into counter-attacks.
With two minutes remaining on the clock, Naomi Evans converted a short-corner and increased the advantage up to two goals. Though it seemed that the NT lost the game, but they did not give up and continued in the last second of the game. In the concluding
moments, Brooke Peris scored off a short-corner and decreased the lead down to a single goal. But it could not save them from defeat and they missed the game at 2-1.
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