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Hockey success
By Cpl Kristen Pickering
Edition 1169, June 28, 2007 |
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| Winning teams: Queensland Men’s and ACT Women’s grand final winners at the ADF Combined Services Hockey in Albury. |
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| Quick sticks: LCpl Kent Moores is too fast for Flt-Lt Alan Brown in the ADF Combined Services Hockey grand final. |
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On the ball: Lt-Col Brenda Sharp with a hard tackle for the ACT side.
Photos by Cpl Kristen Pickering |
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SURGING second half performances enabled the ACT women’s and Queensland men’s sides to clinch Victories at the ADF combined hockey tournament.
The battle between the five states and two territories in Albury from June 2-8 came to a thrilling end with Queensland blitzing Victoria 5-1 in the men’s final and ACT defeating Victoria 4-2 in the women’s final.
The men’s final was set to be a tough match as the two sides had drawn in their earlier encounter.
Both sides were scoreless until the last five minutes of the first half when a Queensland goal was quickly responded to by Victoria taking the score to one all at half time.
Queensland came out strong in the second half, scoring two goals early. Seven minutes remained on the clock and Victoria made a surprise change pulling their goal keeper off, it was clear in the final stages of the game the tactic had backfired.
Queensland flooded forward scoring again. Less than two minutes remained when Queensland swooped in for another easy goal shutting the Victorian side down and taking Queensland to a 5-1 Victoriatory.
WO2 Scott Downs, coach of the Queensland men’s team, said his side was excellent all week long; they didn’t get beaten and never looked like getting beaten.
“Victoria was the surprise packet as they had really only three genuinely rated hockey players and they all stood up,” he said.
“We found the net easier in the final than any other day. We worked hard on our structures we stuck to our guns, held the ball and got the result we were after”.
ACT representative Lt-Col Brenda Sharp said it was great to win the women’s final after last year winning all games apart from the decider. ACT remained undefeated throughout this year’s tournament.
“The Victorian side played valiantly, we were lucky we played well as a team and managed to beat them,” she said.
Victoria was dominant in the first half of the women’s final. Cpl Diane Casey opened the goal scoring in the sixth minute, setting the tone for the remainder of the half.
ACT came out fighting in the second half. Lt-Col Sharp levelled the scores after three minutes. With 23 minutes remaining Cpl Naomi Lewis scored to take ACT into the lead for the first time in the game at 2-1.
Within minutes Victoria answered the goal, only for ACT to score again to take it to 3-2 in its favour.
The Victorian side fought hard but ACT moved ahead to a 4-2 victory.
Lt-Col Sharp has competed for the past 15 years and was happy to see new players coming into the game “giving it a really good crack.”
“It is very good for Defence hockey. People’s attitudes out on the pitch showed really good spirit and character which is what this competition is all about,” she said.
“We have been quiet fortunate that a lot of these girls play together in Canberra and we also have a lot of cadets from the ADFA. I would like to thank them for releasing the cadets to come away with us.”
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