Namibia’s senior women’s national outdoor hockey team lost its second game 6-0 against South Africa on Tuesday at the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations currently underway in Accra, Ghana.

The national women’s team opened its campaign at the championships that is being held from 17 to 23 January with a 3-0 win against Uganda on Monday.

On Tuesday, the Namibians found the going tough as their more experienced opponents, South Africa, dominated play, giving them little room to execute their game plan.

South Africa was awarded 15 penalty corners during the match, from which they failed to convert. Their first goal of the match came in the second quarter as the Namibian goalkeeper, Petro Stoffberg, proved to be the difference during a match.

South Africa’s persistence throughout the match continued paying off in the second quarter, with the Namibians running out of legs to maintain their pressure, which saw them awarded 11 penalty corners at the end of that quarter.

The third quarter saw Namibia’s defence being exposed more, with their opponents pilling more pressure on them.

Despite their dominance of the match, South Africa saw one of their players sent to the sin bin after fouling a Namibian player, but despite being a player down, the South Africans continued with their dominance while restricting Namibia from reaching their goal post.

At the end of the third quarter, Namibia had not yet made the South African goalkeeper save a single ball and that script continued in the fourth quarter, with the game ending with Namibia not having any shots on target or penalty corner.

Speaking after the game, Namibia’s captain Wiandri Ludwig said they knew South Africa was going to be a difficult team to play.

“We stood our ground today with a well-drilled South African team. We hope in our next match we will attack more instead of defending more as we did today,” she said.

The team’s coach Melissa Gillies said she was a bit disappointed with the outcome but maintained that Namibia has a very young team who learned a lot from this match.

“I told the players they are privileged to come and compete with such experienced teams and this should be a learning process for them,” she said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency