Kookaburras Open Title Defence with a Win

The Kookaburras have produced a come from behind scrappy win against Spain on the opening day of the 2011 Champions Trophy in Auckland, New Zealand.

Well lead by champions Jamie Dwyer, who scored two of Australia’s three goals, the Kookaburras were not convincing in their victory, and will look to make significant improvement throughout the tournament.

Despite this, the win gives them three vital points a great opportunity to create history by becoming the first team to win four Champions Trophy titles in a row.

Australia was given the best possible opportunity as soon as the game begun, awarded a penalty corner from the first play of the match.

But, perhaps in a sign of how the remainder of their game would play out, they failed to get a shot off, with Spain taking the ball all the way to the other end and coming extremely close to opening the score after hitting the frame of the goal.

With Spain yet to qualify for the Olympics, they were always going to come out strong in an attempt to take some big scalps at this tournament. And with Australia undoubtedly the biggest scalp available, they appeared switched on from the opening whistle.

Smart play for Jamie Dwyer gave the Kookaburras another chance to score, with the 4 time world player of the year using a referral to give Australia another penalty corner. This time they managed to get a shot away via Luke Doerner, however it was saved and the score remained 0-0.

It was then Spain’s turn for a penalty corner, which was well saved by young Australian goalkeeper Andrew Charter in his first ever Champions Trophy match.

Eventually Australia got some reward for their effort thanks to some individual brilliance from Eddie Ockenden in the circle which resulted in Dwyer converting Australia’s first goal.

Despite trailing on the scoreboard Spain were more than holding their own around the pitch, and looked very dangerous when moving forward due to the amount of space given to them by the Australians.

This ultimately resulted in a great goal by Jorge Gabriel Dabanch after Charter had come out of the net, giving Dabanch an open goal which still required a good shot which he delivered.

When Eduard Tubau converted Spain’s second goal only minutes later, the Australians were under pressure but managed to hang on until the half time break.

The Kookaburras showed more composure during the second half, however still not to the levels they would be expecting.

Once again it was Dwyer who stepped up for the Kookaburras, delivering a well placed shot out of the reach of the keeper to level the game.

After several more failed penalty corner attempts the Kookaburras finally managed to gain the lead with six minutes remaining after Des Abbott converted following a clever play from Luke Doerner and Chris Ciriello.

Spain tried desperately to find an equaliser, putting the Australian defence under extreme pressure. However the Kookaburras managed to hold on.

When asked what his team needed to improve on, Kookaburras coach Ric Charlesworth responded “just about everything”.

Jamie Dwyer also said the team still had many areas to improve on throughout the tournament.

“We were very passive, we need to be more aggressive than that. We gave their ball carriers too much time and space and too many chances. So we definitely didn’t play to our potential and probably lucky to get the result in the end.

There is no real excuses, maybe guys were a little bit nervous and scared to take the game on but you never want to go out there and play like that. You want to be on the front foot. We might have lifted a little bit (as the game went on) but it still wasn’t up to our standard so overall we are pretty disappointed,” said Dwyer.

The Kookaburras will next take on Great Britain on Sunday 4 December.

-HockeyAustralia