Wednesday marked the final day of the 2014 Four Nations Invitational Tournament in Dublin, Ireland and the Canadian Women’s National Field Hockey Team faced Chile in the 3rd place match.
The two teams played in the first game of the tournament on Saturday, when Chile came out on top with a 2-0 victory. In that game, the Canadians had a good first half, with several chances and kept Chile to 0-0. In the rematch, the Chileans were able to net two in the first half for a 2-0 lead. They added a third in the second half for the 3-0 victory.
“We ended the tournament with an improved performance, building from game one through to game four,” says Canadian head coach Ian Rutledge. “Today’s performance should have yielded a better result, but we didn’t take our chances.”
The Canadians out-possessed and out-shot Chile throughout the course of the game, at one point hitting the cross bar. There were strong performances at all ends of the pitch, from the back-end up through to the forwards, which will be encouraging for both team and coaching staff
View the full matchsheet here.
As it was throughout the tournament, the luck was not on their side in the final match of the series, but the team is taking positives from their effort and performances in this tune-up tournament as they now head to Glasgow, Scotland for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
“Structurally and tactically we are in a good place,” adds Rutledge. “we will use the next week training inside the village wisely, addressing a few minor areas exposed our recent opponents, while building from the positives.”
Canada opens the tournament on July 24 against India, a team which is ranked fourteenth in the world and will certainly prove to be a very capable opponent.
For the full schedule of games for the Canadian Women’s National Team at the Commonwealth Games, click here.
