England 0 Italy 3
(Half Time 0-1)
England received a standing ovation at the end of the game from the spectators as well as the other teams, especially South Africa.
This could have been a magical night if the referees hadn’t influenced the result.
I will start my report from the end of the match, as the referees (Argentinean and French) had a bad night with an obviously different criteria for each team, penalising England all the time. We finished the game with five blue cards but it must be noted that none of which were straight blue cards, but always due to a second yellow. All outfield players received yellow cards, however when the same situations presented themselves from the Italian team, the referees didn’t make the same decisions, I remember a couple of times that the Italian players hooked the skates of the English players, which in the rules is a straight blue card, along with pushing our players against barriers without seeing any yellow cards. The referees were definitely showing bias towards the home team.
Let’s forget the referee’s and concentrate on our team performance.
We started the game defending man to man restricted, pressuring the man with the ball. This meant that Italy had to pass the ball to the sides and we could stop them taking long shots from a central area. Our defensive system worked so well that the Italians only had their first real shot on goal after five minutes. England were brave and had good ball possession in attack. At one point we had the ball possession for over two minutes with the Italians pressuring full rink as they needed to score nineteen goals to finish first in the group. Italy finally managed to score their first goal with one minute left on the clock. In that remaining minute we managed to hit the Italian goal post.
The second half was a refereeing nightmare as any tackle made by us was always awarded a yellow card. At one point we had four players on blue cards at the same time all after receiving second yellow cards. The attitude of the team considering the circumstances was brilliant and they managed to keep a high level of concentration playing well in defence and exploring more counter attacks.
We played two different ways in defence changing from man to man restricted pressuring the man with the ball, over to pressuring the man with the ball and the man who created the pass line. Italy had a lot of problems playing their carousel because of these tactics and their two goals come from a couple of good moves whilst we had a lot of players on blue cards.
I am very pleased with overall team performance, as in this game we proved that we now have a system implemented in our teams so it doesn’t matter who is on the rink, the team will still perform the same.
Our next game will be tomorrow against Australia who finished 4th in Group C. We are now concentrating on winning this game as this way we will be playing for 9th – 12th place, which is already a better position than last year’s World Championships.
The most important thing is that England is gaining so much respect in the world. One member of the CIRH who was on the time keepers table congratulated me for the excellent team performance as well as my patience with the referee’s decisions.
At the end of the match I shook hands with the referees, just saying I was disappointed with their obvious agenda.
Carlos Amaral
