Hockey: Singapore outclassed in World League quarter-finals

SINGAPORE — A place in the final rounds of the hockey World League is no longer in Singapore’s reach after a 8-0 hammering by Poland yesterday (Jan 22) night at the Sengkang Stadium.

Hosting the World League Round 2 here, Singapore were not expected to beat the Poles who topped Pool B while Singapore propped up Pool A with three defeats in the preliminaries, rounded off by a 16-1 thrashing by Malaysia on Tuesday.

Singapore are ranked 37th in the world and the gulf in standards to the 18th-ranked Poland were laid bare.

As Singapore coach Casoojee Solomon said after the match: “We have to be realistic in our thinking. Poland are in the top twenty bracket in world hockey and we are at No 37. We have to compare apples with apples.”

But after the disastrous cave-in against Malaysia, the fear was that another massive defeat would make things worse for Singapore hockey, whose reputation has been battered during this tournament.

Added Casoojee: “Still, I am not happy with our peerformance despite keeping the score down to 8-0. I thought we are capable of playing better. Our orginal game plan didn’t work. The aim was deny and contain the Polish and then try to get inside their D. But we caught by some quick counterattacks and paid the price.

“Of course it all boils down to experience and maturity to be able to carry out our game plan. I am sure we will learn some useful lessons from this tournament. Especially after the loss to Malaysia. We know we have let ourselves down and I can sense the anger and the disappointment the players felt after the game.

“Today we went into the match against Poland with a bit more urgency and committment and wanting to make up for the poor performance against Malaysia.

“It’s not all bad for Singapore in this tournament. Sure losing to Malaysia was a blow but there were moments against Oman and Ukraine when I thought we could have won the two matches. There are some talented players in the teaam and it’s my job to work on them and make them better players to make a stronger team.”

In the other quarter-final results, Malaysia beat Mexico 10-1; Japan beat Ukraine 5-0 and Oman beat Bangladesh 2-0 on penalty shoot-out after both teams were tied at 3-3 at the end of normal time.

In the semi-finals Malaysia will meet Japan while Poland will play Oman, with the top three teams advancing to the next round in Belgium and Argentina for tournaments that will decide the sixteen teams to the Rio De Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

Singapore, along with the losers of the other three quarter-finals, will play out classification matches for 5th to 8th positions for this tournament.