Men's Results from Miyoshi, Day 1

[DeanM]

Hi folks

Day 1 was a bit rough for the NZ Men. First game was against Netherlands, we lost 2-7 (goals to Jimmy and Tom). We didn't play as well as we would have liked, although the Dutch are very good. Second game was against Japan, and we lost 2-4 (goals to James and Nick). We played a bit better but still not to our best. Third game was against Spain and we needed to win to retain a chance of qualifying in the top 8 after the first round. We scored first and got up to be 3-1 at half time but then they scored twice early in the second half and we had to push hard for the win and ended up conceding another two goals; final score 3-5.

Today we play Ireland in the last of our pool games. They are pretty good but have also lost to Spain and Netherlands. In the second round we'll be playing off for 9th to 18th. Whoever gets 9th will get to play the 8th placed team from the top 8 group for an 8th/9th play-off. That's still our goal. We have two games today (Friday): Ireland and the first of the second round games, then 4 games on Saturday and 1 or 2 games on Sunday.

I'm not too sure of the details of the women's results. They beat Sweden 7-3 and lost to Australia 2-3 in a last-minute cliff-hanger. Three games today, I think, the biggest being France this afternoon.

Cheers,

- Dean

[Juno]

[Juno]

Hard Luck Guys,
The pool looked pretty tough from my experience in 2002. Give it heaps and keep aiming for that eighth spot, hit every team hard with the intensity that we all know you have. We are all behind you back here, pass on our best wishes to the girls.

P.S a little to quick on the draw with the above thread

[Aaron]

Hard Luck guys. It's good to see you are competitive even if you didn't feel you played up to your best. Keep that kiwi flag flying and know we are all behind you whatever the final result.


Cheers
Aaron

[Aaron]

You can see all the results online at www.canoepolo2004.jp (http://www.canoepolo2004.jp/)

Unfortunately the results are only posted on the Japanese version at the moment. If you can't read Japanese you will need to go into the English version first to find out where they are.

P.S. if you click on the orange star there are pics as well

[vish]

http://www.canoepolo2004.jp/english2/

There are now results on the English site, go to Pairings and Results, choose todays results.

Bad luck on those results boys, but fight back!

Go NZ!!!

[DeanM]

Tricky game this. We wanted to qualify 4th in our pool but not 3rd or 5th. To do that we had to beat Ireland by at least 3　goals but not score more than 6. We got to 5-1 up and things were going to plan and we turned down a couple of easy opportunities. But then they scored 3 goals in a row which completely wrecked our plan. We ended up winning 7-6 (James scored the winner with 4 seconds on the clock) but we did it the hard way really.

We play the first game of the next round in about an hour, probably against the USA. We have a slightly harder path than if we'd executed our Ireland plan successfully. At the end of the first round, in our pool Japan, Ireland and NZ all have the same number of points, but we have the worst goal difference (barely).

In other news, the women beat Canada this morning 3-1 (I think) and have just beaten Ireland 5-2 or 6-2. Their big game for the day is against France this evening.

Cheers,

- Dean