South Africa earned the last place at the Athens Olympics for field hockey after beating Belgium on penalty strokes at the men’s qualifying event on Saturday.
Belgium’s players slumped to the pitch as Jean-Philippe Brule pushed weakly to the right post for Dave Staniforth to save the sudden-death penalty stroke which ended the fixture.
After a 2-2 draw, South Africa won 4-3 on penalty strokes. Belgium looked to have their passage to Athens booked when they took a 2-0 lead after nine minutes through Charles Vanderweghe’s backstick deflection off a pass from the left and Brule’s conversion of Belgium’s first penalty corner.
South Africa fought back, getting two shots on goal and a penalty corner that Greg flicked low on to the pads of Cedric Degreve in Belgium’s goal and Iain Evans picked up the rebound and pushed low into goal.
South Africa had four more penalty corners in the first half and could not convert again while South Africa’s midfield defence allowed three turnovers to give Belgium shots on goal.
South Africa had to wait until the last 10 seconds of regular time to score the equaliser, a Gregg Clark drive from the top of the circle from a free hit outside the circle on the right to put the match into a scoreless golden goal extra-time.
Both teams changed goalkeepers for the penalty stroke shoot-out, Dave Staniforth going in for South Africa and Manu Leroy for Belgium.
Both goalkeepers saved two penalty strokes in the first set of five strokes to put the competition into sudden death strokes.
Ian Symons slotted his stroke low to the left to bring Brule in for the pressure shot which he completely miss-timed, pushing weakly to the right post for Dave Staniforth to make the simplest of saves. – Sapa-AFP