Britain go down in women’s hockey opener amid video referral farce

• Germany win 2-1 but that only tells part of the story
• Hollie Pearne-Webb: ‘The points should have been ours’

First, the facts. Great Britain, the reigning Olympic women’s hockey champions, began their title defence with a 2-1 defeat to Germany in Pool A. The statistics will show that a scuffed penalty from Viktoria Huse cancelled out Sarah Jones’s close-range opener before Charlotte Stapenhorst scored the winner in the third quarter. But that’s not the full story of this absorbing encounter at a sweltering Oi Hockey Stadium.

Great Britain had a host of chances to get at least a draw from this match, and the penalty corner tally of 11 to one in their favour tells its own story. So many times they had their opponents pinned back in desperate defence and Germany’s goalkeeper Julia Sonntag was inspired. Afterwards GB’s captain, Hollie Pearne-Webb, knew it was one that got away. “It was a really dominant performance. On balance of play, the points should have been ours,” she said. But GB were also wasteful, and Pearne-Webb admitted as much. “We didn’t make sure it was three points.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3zDgyDj