SA canoe polo squad ends world champs on a high

Also somewhat belated:

Edmonton, Canada – The South Africa canoe polo team ended the world championship tournament by winning a thrilling final match cliff-hanger against Japan that saw the team rise several places in the world rankings.

After enduring a torrid first round of pool matches that saw them suffer defeats at the hands of Ireland, Italy and Denmark, the South Africans slipped out of the top three placing in their pool and missed the cut for the top half of the knockout competition, effectively meaning that they were now competing for places 13 to 24 in the competition.

However the determined South Africans got the second half of the tournament off to a perfect start with a solid 3-2 victory against the host nation Canada, and then showed their ever improving form by walloping the USA 7-0, before suffering a narrow loss to Japan.

In the semi-final stages the South Africans lost a close match to Chinese Taipei by two goals to set up a final match against Japan that would decide places 15 and 16 at the world championships, and with it a guaranteed berth into the next world championships.

“We tried a new defensive strategy against Japan which worked well but we also conceded a couple of runaway goals after losing possession whilst attacking their zone. That is how we found ourselves two goals behind with two minutes left in the match,” said team coach Kevin Meier.

The South Africans opted to send their entire team on attack, leaving their goal undefended, and scored a goal with just thirty seconds left in the match.

From the restart Dale Morphew forced a turnover and flipped the ball out to Matt Swemmer who fired a desperate long range shot at goal with just three seconds of gametime remaining.

“The ball initially looked as if it was going wide,” said Meier, “but then curved in the air over the distance and went into the goal! I nearly fell off the pontoon with excitement.”

That last-gasp goal forced the play-off into two periods of extra time, during which time neither team scored. That left the match to be decided by a penalty shoot-out involving five members of each team.

South African goalie Clive Whitton gave his team the perfect start to the decider by saving the first Japanese penalty, before Craig Rees scored for the South Africans. With the pressure now squarely on the Japanese Whitton saved the next two goals, while Andrew Pott and Dean Oellermann slotted goals to secure the victory in an electric atmosphere.

The win left South Africa with a final ranking of 15^th, and a guaranteed qualification for the next world champs in Italy in 2010.

“There is very little in difference between the teams from about 6th position to 16th position,” said Meier. “Although we were disappointed with our overall standing we were very happy that by the end of the worlds we had improved to a very competitive level.”

Dave MacLeod/Gameplan Media