Scotland lost their opening game to Belgium by 0-3 in Volvo Euro Hockey U-18 Youth Championship
The Scottish junior girls started their campaign with utter disappointment in the Volvo Euro Hockey U-18 Youth Championship, which is being played in Utrecht, Netherlands from July 12 to 17. Scotland were defeated by Belgium by 0-3 in their opening fixture
played on July 12.
The Scottish girls displayed wonderful performance and dominated the opponents, particularly in the first 35 minutes, but remained unlucky on a couple of occasions in the first half. The Belgian girls too played well in the first half, but their best efforts
were seen in the second part of the game, where they controlled most of the game and scored all of their three goals.
The first half started with some beautiful early chances created by the Scottish girls, but they could not make full use of those opportunities and fell short of their target. Emma Barlow and Sarah Robertson missed a couple of goal-scoring chances, whereas
their best goal scoring opportunity was missed by Hazel Hall, when she could not convert a penalty-stroke into goal. The first half ended at 0-0.
In the second half, the Belgian girls looked much improved as compared to their early show in the game. They scored their opening goal of the match just five minutes into the second half, when Stephanie Rummens made a wonderful strike to put her team ahead
of the opponents by a single strike.
Belgium continued to put pressure on the Scottish girls and again became successful in the 52nd minute, when Ysaline Nobels doubled the Belgian lead with a beautiful field goal. The Scottish girls tried very hard to stop the Belgian attacks, but
failed to do so while the Belgian girls again came with a beauty two minutes before the close of the play, when Victoire Vincent scored the final goal of the match, a wonderful effort on open play. The match concluded at 3-0 to Belgium.
The Scottish coach looked confident for a better performance in their next match against Ireland.
"We played well against a good Belgian side, the girls were far from disgraced, but now we must regroup for today`s game against Ireland," Colin Clarke, the Scottish coach, stated after the match.
Meanwhile, the Scottish junior boys too were defeated by Austria by 1-4 in their second match at the Euro Hockey U-18 Nations Championship, which is being played in Cernusco, Italy.
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