MADRID, 8 March 2004 — Great Britain’s Olympic hopes received another blow when they went down to Spain 2-1 in the Olympic Hockey Qualifiers here at the Club de Campo yesterday.
Xavier Ribas struck twice for the hosts, that took Britain to the verge of elimination from the race for the seven Olympic Games’ slots at stake in the competition. With just three points from their four matches, Britain will have to beat South Africa, their chief rival in Pool A, in their next match and then hope Spain beat Poland so that they can qualify for the 5-8 classification matches.
British coach Jason Lee said his team gave an improved performance but was still not good enough to beat a strong side like Spain. “We played much better today but need to raise our level further up to have any hopes of playing in Athens,” said Lee.
The South Africans added to the misery of the 1984 Olympic champions by beating Japan 2-1 and jump to the third spot in the group behind Spain and Holland. Gregg Nicol was South Africa’s hero scoring both the goals for his team in the important match.
In the third match of the day, the Netherlands blasted Poland 4-0 with two goals coming on the either side of the break. Evers (11th) and Jazet (26th) put the Dutch 2-0 up at the interval and a brace by de Nooijer (66th and 70th) completed the Poland rout.
Britain — at the mercy of other teams in their bid to qualify have themselves to blame for the situation their find themselves in following their shock 1-0 loss to Poland early in the competition — led the hosts in an early aggressive display but then conceded two goals to suffer their third loss.
Striker Danny Hall came close to giving Britain a perfect start but his shot in the fifth minute was saved well by the Spanish goalkeeper Bernardino Herrera. Both sides failed to produce any goals in the first session in spite of a number of attempts both of field moves and short corners.
Danny Hall finally found the target three minutes into the second session following a superb field move. But Britain were brought down with a thud three minutes later when Ribas got the equalizer for Spain with a short corner strike. Ribas converted another penalty corner in the 55th minute to seal Spain’s win.
In quite a similar manner, South Africa rallied back from one goal down to turn Japan’s dream of playing in this summer’s Athens into a nightmare with a 2-1 victory. While the result improved South Africa’s chances of qualifying for Athens, Japan were out of the run for an Olympic berth after their fourth consecutive loss in the tournament.
Japan took a 1-0 lead in the 14th minute through a short corner strike from Takahiko Yamabori, And held on grimly South Africa managed to make it 1-1 with a Gregg Nicol goal in the 43rd minute and Nicol struck again five minutes from the final whistle to give South Africa three vital points.
