DIARY: JUNE 1
DIARY: JUNE 1
| |||||||||||||
|
June 1 |
When I arrived at the stadium for the last of the 13 days of competition of this double World Cup, the party area and the rest of Galgenwaard Complex were, as usual, impeccably clean: an army of cleaners had worked in the wee hours of the morning to prepare the stage for the Grand Final. Before talking about what happened on the field, it is worth mentioning the army of volunteers and workers who made this event such a resounding success. They were proud to be associated with the World Cup (most of them play field hockey), happy to be there, resourceful and always smiling despite the long hours. The 3 or 4 students rotating shifts in the communication room in the Press Center must have explained 3 or 4000 times how to work the fax machine but they kept doing it with a smile and a joke, probably bringing in the process some comfort to the heart of the stressed Indian journalists having to send home the news of another poor performance. I met one of them at the closing party and she insisted on offering me a beer with these words "you are all our guests!". Thank you! On the field of play, this last day was for the classifications. India beat New Zealand by the meager score of 1-0 (one penalty stroke…) to take the 9th spot but once again go home in total disarray. Pakistan beat England (4-2) for the 5th spot but neither team gave the impression of having the potential to challenge the Big Four. England's future without penalty corner specialist Calum Giles looks really bleak…
For the 7th place, Canada was facing Korea. Although the guys certainly wanted to give a memorable farewell to Captain Patrick Burrows, who had announced that this 224th cap would be the last one, the motivation was possibly missing a bit Legs were tired after 6 games of very high level hockey in 12 days, discipline suffered a bit, leaving too much space to the extremely fast Korean forwards and Seong Tae Song took advantage of that to score 4 goals, a rare feat at that level.
In a tradition now well established, Canada scored its first goal less than a minute after the first Korean one: Alan Brahmst signed his return to the team with a penalty corner. Late in the game, Ian Bird scored another one to limit the score at 2-4.
After the game, a friendly reception was organized in the "Hockey Village"
(the classy part of the Galgenwaard Complex where organizers and sponsors
entertain special guests) to close this very successful Canadian campaign at
the 1998 World Cup and, equally important, to roast the new retiree
Patrick Burrows.
In the appetizer for the Gold Medal game, Germany reversed the results of the 1994 World Cup and of the 1996 Olympic Games and grabbed the Bronze Medal from Australia (1-0). At the post game press-conference, German Captain Christian Blunk, following Pat Burrows's lead, announced his retirement from international hockey and coach Paul Lissek, when asked to comment on this World Cup, paid tribute to the Canadian team and their superb game against Germany (4-4, with 2 Canadian goals in the last 10 minutes!).
Then it was the men's final, the last of 84 games played over these 13 days of competition. There were many more spectators than the official capacity of 15,000: despite the multiple security announcements, the stairs remained packed! The noise was deafening. Day after day, the orange crowd seems to bring new songs, cheers and noise makers: yesterday, the orange rattles distributed earlier in the week were used very efficiently to hammer on the metallic Heineken serving trays! The obviously highly motivated Dutch team rushed out of the gate, trying to overwhelm the Spaniards right off the start. But, as was said before, this Spanish team is not only athletic, fast and technically very strong, they are also highly organized and patient. They were cleverly occupying the space and cutting all the Dutch options. They are also imaginative with the ball and midfield Juan Dinares (an architect when he is not playing high level hockey) and amazing forward Juan Escarre were using every ball to create dangerous opportunities. It paid off after 18 minutes when, on a quick counter attack launched by a spectacular diving pass from a defender to his left winger, Javier Arnau beat Dutch goalkeeper Ronal Jansen. This was the only goal in the first half and the same pattern prevailed at the beginning of the second half with Holland incapable of finding the key to the Spanish defensive network. Then a stunning penalty-corner combination baffled the Dutch defense and Victor Pujol just needed to gently push the ball over the line to make it 0-2.
Down 2 goals with only 15 minutes to go… The crowd was a tad quieter now… But the orange pride was at stake; the Dutch players suddenly turned on the emergency turbo and the Spanish defense (disorganized by the loss of Juan Escarre with a pulled hamstring) broke apart twice in less than a minute (Stephan Veen then Bram Lomans) before resorting to time wasting tricks to survive a flurry of penalty corners and reach full time with the score tied at 2-2. World Cup Final and overtime, with "sudden death" or "golden goal" (depending on which side you are!). You need a strong heart to go through that, even as a spectator. It is hard to imagine what goes through the heads of the players! The momentum was now Dutch and the crowd was more alive and excited than ever. The Spaniards were most certainly mentally down after thinking that they had the game wrapped up with their second goal then losing Juan Escarre... No goal scored in the first 7.5 minutes of overtime but it was obviously only a question of time and, with 2 minutes to go before a penalty-stroke competition, Teun de Nooijer hammered in a penalty corner rebound, catapulting his team, the crowd and a whole country into total ecstasy! There is something incredibly emotional in the happy madness of a stadium crowd. Tears came to my eyes as I was wildly clapping and dancing along with the orange crowd. This was a fitting ending for this exceptional World Cup: the Dutch team was sitting on top of the Everest of field hockey and the orange crowd was in seventh heaven! As you can imagine, the closing party was wild. During the longest time, it was impossible to even come close to the tent where the dancing was going on. But beer stands had been set-up outside and extra kegs were delivered nearly non-stop. When I left, past midnight and due at the train station only a few hours later, the energy level was still extremely high: when the live band wanted a break, they just needed to shout "Who is World Champion?" and the crowd would ecstatically start cheering "HOL-LAND-HOL-LAND". Only the Dutch could have pulled off such a huge event of this double field hockey World Cup. Their organization was imaginative and flawless; their enthusiasm and their knowledge of hockey (and appreciation of good hockey) set the tone in the stands, creating the best possible environment for the players to express their immense talents. Thank you Utrecht, thank you organizers and volunteers, thank you teams,
thank you Canadian Team for the great memories!!!
| |||||||||||||||
More reports can be found on
| ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
|
For more information:
fhc@fieldhockey.ca
F.H.C. Menu
'98 World Cup Menu
At 39 and after 224 games with the Canadian National Team,
Korean penalty-corner unit
CANADIAN CORNER !
