The South African men’s hockey team turned in a much-improved performance against Canada on Thursday evening to clinch the third hockey Test by two goals to nil and with it the series at Pretoria Technikon.
The South Africans won the first Test on Monday 1-0, before drawing 1-1 on Tuesday, after losing the first three-Test series in Potchefstroom 1-0.
Those performances, however, left much to be desired and coach Paul Revington will be slightly more pleased following Thursday’s showing.
Despite the morale-boosting series victory, South Africa have plenty of work to do if they hope to qualify for the Athens Olympic Games at the qualifying tournament in Madrid next month.
The early exchanges saw both teams reluctant to give anything away and the first real scoring opportunity only came well into the match.
Good work from striker John McInroy down the right flank set up midfielder Ian Symons for a first-time shot, but he skewed it over the bar. The home team had heaps more chances in the first 35 minutes, but none of them were taken advantage of as a mixture of good goalkeeping from Canada’s Mike Mahood and poor finishing let them down.
South Afirca’s biggest scoring weapon, Greg Nicol, was not given an inch throughout the half, but Gregg Clarke showed his international days are not numbered with some yeoman work up front.
He was deservedly voted as man of the match.
Even his efforts though came to nothing in a dull first half that yielded only four penalty corners — three to the Canadians and one to South Africa.
Canada had several chances of their own — particularly through penalty corners — but Wayne Fernandes failed to find the target on each occasion.
The second half started off a bit more franticly with both teams creating better chances and South Africa finally broke the deadlock through young Wayne Madsen 11 minutes into the second stanza.
They then put the match and the series result beyond doubt when Nicol slammed home the winner in the 59th minute after excellent work from Eastern Province teammate Denzil Dolley.
South Africa depart for Madrid on March 3. — Sapa