Fantastic win for Scotland men in intense Gold Coast opener

Scotland men’s hockey team kicked off their Commonwealth Games 2018 debut against South Africa, ranked number 15 in the world, with an excellent 4-2 victory in the Gold Coast.

Photo by Team Scotland

The Blue Sticks’ fighting spirit could be seen straight away in the first quarter, with Rob Harwood showing great initiative and positional instinct to put Scotland into a 1-0 lead.

This lead was quickly doubled with a cracking reverse stick strike from Kenny Bain arrowing straight into the top corner of the net to make it 2-0.

Just before quarter one ended, birthday boy Alan Forsyth managed to celebrate his big day in style scoring a lovely goal, bringing Scotland’s lead up to 3-0. The Scots were on fire.

Quarter two came with more intensity from the Scots with Gavin Byers setting up a strike, however, Forsyth was just short on this occasion.

In the third quarter South Africa was determined to pull back some goals. They were unlucky in their first attempt from a penalty corner, prompting a great save from Tommy Alexander. However, not long after their first, they gained a second penalty corner and a fantastic straight strike right from the top of the D by Gareth Heyns, brought the score to 3-1.

Around seven minutes later, South Africa doubled their tally by a strike from Tim Drummond; it was clear South Africa were not going down without a fight.

This gave Scotland more determination to come out on top and this was proven by Bain scoring his second goal of the match, two minutes into the final quarter. This brought the score up to 4-2 for Scotland.

An incredible match for Scotland came to a close with a great 4-2 win, setting the Scots up nicely for their next Gold Coast match on Saturday 7th April against Canada.

Afterward, Kenny Bain spoke on scoring a double,

“The win is way more important, obviously as a striker scoring goals is great but the way we scored the goals was exactly how we did it in training. The boys were perfect – put it on a plate for me and I kept my focus to score.

“Coming into these tournaments we’re always the underdogs but now that we’ve gained promotion in the Europeans we’re starting to take steps to see ourselves as a bigger team at these tournaments, we’ve really started focussing on attacking hockey rather than being defensive. We’ve got such a talented group of players and we scored good goals against a good team like South Africa.

“First game and first win, so we’re really happy with that.”

Scotland captain Chris Grassick said, “Getting that fourth goal gave us some breathing space and allowed us to be potent on the ball again. Four years ago we lost our opening game in Glasgow but today we’ve come away with a good win. We’re a team that’s on the up and I think we showed that today.”

Find out more about our Scotland men’s international squad HERE

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