South Africa delighted a good crowd by winning the first men’s hockey Test played at Hartleyvale in Cape Town in an otherwise undistinguished match on Saturday.
Belgium elected to play with a strong south-easterly wind at their backs. Greg Nicol opened the scoring in the sixth minute with a low flick after the Belgians were penalised for foul play.
Thereafter the visitors dominated play. Their tactics of throwing overheads with the wind caused consternation in the defence. However, they failed to create chances.
Their pressure culminated in a series of penalty corners before being eventually thwarted by goalkeeper Dave Staniforth.
Loic Vandeweghe was shown the yellow card shortly before halftime. This incident seemed to settle the game, as the visitors in particular had been guilty of overly physical play.
South Africa also played the high ball, but it was on the ground that they looked dangerous as Craig Fulton produced a defence-splitting pass only for Nicol to fluff his shot. They soon repeated the combination, and this time Nicol was brought down. He converted the resulting penalty stroke.
Tension built in the final 10 minutes. Xavier Reckinger narrowed the deficit from the penalty spot, but missed a chance to equalise with four minutes left, leaving coach Giles Bonnet to reflect on their failure to convert any of their eight penalty corners.
The two teams meet again in the second Test at the same venue on Sunday. — Sapa
The remaining matches are:
January 18, 3pm: SA vs Belgium
January 20, 7pm: SA vs Belgium
January 22, 11am: Belgium vs The Netherlands
January 23, 7pm: Belgium vs The Netherlands
January 25, 3pm: SA vs The Netherlands
January 26, 10am: SA vs The Netherlands