Hockey: World Cup
SCOTLAND's World Cup players may not have reached the heights of their predecessors 12 years ago when they finished two places better, but their tenth position at Utrecht at the weekend will act as a launching pad for next time.
Indeed, in terms of Scottish sport generally, few national teams presently warrant a top-10 world ranking. In that concept the women have done well but they admit they should have done better, even although the semi-finalists Argentina, Australia, Germany, and Holland, are now a long way ahead of the chasing pack.
Scotland's three victories in seven starts was as much as they could have expected, but their statistics could have been more impressive had they not suffered their odd-goal defeat by the USA.
The players will be angry with themselves for losing their final match against England 2-0.
They should have won that match but with the attack not delivering and the defence making mistakes, there was little likelihood of them recovering from first-half goals by Jane Sixsmith and Jane Smith.
Mike Gilbert, the Scottish coach, has done much to take the team to its present height. However, he will undoubtedly accept some of the blame for this reversal, for it seems he may have allowed his heart to over-rule his tactical brain.
For this game, Gilbert elected to field his reserve goalkeeper Sue Lawrie instead of his regular netminder Tracey Robb.
Lawrie, sadly, was directly responsible for the first goal as she was slow to react to Sixsmith's breakthrough.
Australia yesterday upset Holland's ambition to win the men and women's titles. The Aussies beat them 3-2 in the women's final and now they will be seeking compensation when they play Spain in the men's final. The Dutch women looked to be heading for another title but it was the Australians why were celebrating in the end.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article