Delayed: Losing to Argentina in England’s 1st match meant that we had to beat Uruguay for a chance to reach the semi-finals.
Uruguay had beaten New Zealand earlier in the day by 7 – 1, giving them 3 points to England’s nil.
The crowd of around 600 had come to see their Country win, with the drums beating and lots of cheering the atmosphere was electric!
Starting team: Ian Smith goal keeper, James Taylor (captain) making his debut in the Championships after serving a red card one match suspension from the World ‘B’ game also against Uruguay here last December. Sam Jackson, Andrew Sims and Matt Oaten.
Kos Galtos the England coach briefed the team in his usual lengthy fashion! Telling the lads it will be a very tough physical game, that they should play a zone marking system, and to be patient as the match is often won in the final 10 minutes, how right he was.
After just 59 seconds from the beginning of the match Taylor receives his 1st yellow card along with a Uruguayan, clearly the referees mean to clamp down on rough play!
3 minutes in Uruguay score a soft goal from their first counter attack of the game 0 – 1.
1 minute later Taylor shoots low and hard along the floor to put the ball under the keeper 1 – 1. The team go wild as do the partisan crowd!
6 minute in and Oaten fouls giving away a penalty, which was clearly outside the area! Argentine referee! Ian Smith makes a good save to keep the score 1 – 1.
12 minutes in Sam Jackson makes it 2 – 1 scoring the rebound from Taylor’s drive shot.
First half result England 2 – 1 Uruguay.
A very close half, with 7 chances to England, and 5 to the Uruguayans.
The same starting line takes the floor for what turned out to be a thrilling 2nd half performance!
4 minutes in and a very dubious 2nd yellow card puts Taylor out of the game for 2 minutes on a blue card.
15 minutes to go and the Uruguayans are trying to foul the lads out of the game with some very rough tackles, they are, however, being penalized with cards by the second referee, a Brazilian Mr. F Jacques who is having an excellent match.
13 minutes remaining of the half and coach Galtos calls a time out to steady the players and put Taylor back on for Naifsey. The score line is still 2 – 1.
9 minutes left and Andrew Sims breaks on the counter attack with a one on one situation, he rounds the keeper to make it 3 – 1. A great individual goal! You can see the celebration picture on www.ukrollerhockey.com Gordon Morrison is updating the site daily so keep checking!
5 minutes left and Uruguay are pressing in a game they have to win resulting in a direct blue given to their no 5, Martin Soler. The tough tackles! Are piling in now.
10 seconds later Taylor passes to Sims to put the ball away for his 2nd goal of the match and England’s fourth. 4 – 1.
3 minutes to go and the pace is still fast and furious, Andrew Sims scores his hat trick with a lovely move coming around the back of the goal to chip over the keeper, Game over! 5 – 1
17 seconds on and Sims is not finished yet, he scores another fine goal to make it England 6 – 1.
After this the game deteriorated with Taylor sticked in the face and a further blue and straight red given to Uruguay. The final card tally to Uruguay was 6 yellow, 3 blue and 1 straight red card!
During the ensuing melee Uruguay scored their 2nd with 2 players lying on top of our keeper Ian Smith.
Before the players leave the floor the Uruguayan coach rushes over to our bench making threatening gestures to Captain Taylor who is now off injured after a stick to the face , and Coach Galtos has to physically block him and the crowd go wild!!
We have to have a Police escort to the dressing rooms as the 600 strong crowd are spitting on us and threatening violence . It gets so bad that the team were escorted to another bus by police with battons drawn to get us to the hotel.
This was a great and exiting game marred by a few incident.
More info: Steve Taylor
Reporter: Kos Galtos
