Scotland lose to Canada in their opening game

Scotland’s FIH World League Round 2 campaign started with William Marshall being honoured for playing his 100th International Cap. However celebrations ended there as Scotland lost 5-3 to Canada, in what proved to be an exciting end to end match.

Canada opened the scoring only 42 seconds after the starting whistle, with Matt Guest beating the keeper with a reverse-stick shot. Three minutes later, Keegan Pereira made it 2-0 through a penalty corner.

Scotland were able to get one back through Niall Stott, who scored a terrific penalty corner. But Canada responded almost immediately with Scott Tupper scoring the penalty-stroke and re-establishing a two-goal gap for the Canadians.

Both teams conceded own goals later on to bring the half time score to 4-2.

Scotland got off to a good start in the 2nd half, showing promising signs of a comeback. Scotland were rewarded a penalty, which was clinically put away by Niall Stott. A few seconds later Mark Pearson collected the ball in the Scottish circle and smashed one in to the back of the net to make it 5-3.

With ten minutes left to play, Scotland continued to push forward in search of a few more goals. Albeit Canada sat back and defended well to prevent a comeback from happening.

After the game, Scotland Manager Eugene Connolly said, “The main reason for not getting more out of the game today is because we started nervously, conceding two goals in seven minutes. When we got in to our game we were every bit as good as Canada. Unfortunately they had that comfort zone of two goals and we perhaps weren’t as ruthless enough as we should have been.”

Scotland play Belgium in their 2nd game of the FIH World League Round 2, which will prove to be a very tough task. Talking about their next match, Eugene Connolly said, “Belgium will be very tough, they scored 19 goals today. There are two things we have to focus on: Defend a lot better than we did today and make sure we retain our possession.”

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