Zaahier Adams
The South African men’s hockey team’s aspirations at the Paris Olympics are hanging by a thread after their 5-1 defeat to Germany yesterday morning.
Cheslyn Gie’s team have just one point from three matches and will face Spain tomorrow (7:45pm) in a crucial encounter. The Spanish have four points after a victory over Germany and a 3-3 draw earlier against hosts France, who are bottom of the table with a single point too.
South Africa are still to play France in their final Pool A match.
Germany were simply too strong for the South Africans, who were hoping for a repeat of their victory over the European giants at the last Olympics in Tokyo three years ago.
But the Germans, still smarting from their earlier defeat to Spain, were in the mood for revenge and came out of the blocks firing with an opening goal within the first minute of this feisty contest.
The former Argentinian legend Gonzalo Peillat, who switched allegiance to Germany in 2022, opened the scoring for his adopted nation.
And before the South Africans could recover from the dreadful start, they found themselves conceding a penalty stroke.
Germany had, in fact, managed to put the ball into the South African net from the build-up play, but referee Raghu Prasad had already blown his whistle to award the stroke.
Christopher Ruhr stood up to take the responsibility and calmly slotted the ball past Gowan Jones in the South African goal to double the Germans’ lead shortly before the end of the first quarter.
South Africa’s misery was further compounded when Justus Weigand made it 3-0 in the third quarter and a possible comeback became highly unlikely at this stage.
Gie, though, must have stern words at the half-time interval because South Africa came out very determined after the break.
The green and gold managed to force a short corner, which Matthew Guise-Brown brilliantly slotted home to provide the South Africans with a lifeline.
Unfortunately, it proved only to be a consolation for the South Africans as the Germans rubber-stamped their dominance over proceedings with two further goals ‒ one in each quarter ‒ from Peillat and Mats Grambusch before the final whistle.
With the midday temperatures in Paris touching 36°C, the tempers on both sides also started to boil over with South Africa’s Andrew Hobson and Germany’s Johannes Grobe being yellow-carded.
Ultimately, it was the Germans who kept their composure to collect the three valuable points.