Times of India: We worked on our mistakes after losing to Germany: Phil Roper
Feroz Khan
BHUBANESWAR: England produced two contrasting performances in the space of one day as they bounced back from their 0-2 defeat to record their first win of the Hockey World League Final on Saturday.
Playing in front of a partisan home crowd, England maintained their calm and composure to beat India 3-2 and take home full three points from the fixture.
England coach Bobby Crutchley was pleased with the performance and said that missing three key players in their opening match against Germany on Friday resulted in a drab performance.
“We were missing three players yesterday. So, we couldn’t play at the same intensity that we wanted to. We got a couple of them back today. So that made the difference as we were able to play our tactics. Based around that,” he said after the match.
Shedding some light on their tactics, Bobby said, “We always want to put pressure. We have to be more organised to deny the space, passes. We know India can threaten with long passes. So, we can’t give them those. We also wanted to put pressure to win the ball too. When your defence turns over the ball, you have the space to counterattack. And that’s a key thing in international hockey now. To create counterattack opportunities, you need to defend well. So it’s not just about attacking, you have to get the defensive bit first.”
England captain Phil Roper said the team worked on their mistakes. “We did some decent work last night and looked up what went wrong against Germany and try to correct that. Thankfully it kind of went well today,” he said.
India did raise their intensity in the final 10 minutes as they tried hard for a comeback and managed to do that converting a penalty corner before England restored their lead through Sam Ward’s second strike of the night.
“All the momentum was with India for those 10 minutes. Especially when the crowd gets going. We always knew if we stuck to our game plan and stayed composed, we could snatch a goal. We played some good hockey and luckily we have some forwards who can score those kind of goals,” Roper said.