Great Britain to play off for 5th place on Saturday
The Great Britain korfball team will face Catalonia (Spain)
in the 5th/6th playoff of the 2006 European Championships
in Budapest on Saturday at 12:45pm local time, after winning
a nervous playoff match 9-6 against hosts Hungary.
In a very low-scoring match where the kick-off had been delayed
after rain leaked through the roof of the tournament venue,
the score was only 3-2 to Britain at half-time, which is almost
unheard of in an international match. Hungary levelled the
score immediately after the break and then missed the chance
to go ahead by missing a penalty. Great Britain did not give
the home side a second chance by scoring the next three goals,
and then never surrendered the lead after that, to silence
the home crowd. Steve Green lead the British scoring with
four goals, with David Brooks (2), Rob Williams, Karen Sparrow
and Aimee Evans also on the scoresheet.
This means that Great Britain will now try to match their
2002 finish of 5th place, although this time, rather than
facing Portugal, who did not even qualify for the 2006 event,
it will be their much-improved Spanish neighbours (korfball
only being played in the Catalan area of Spain) who defeated
Russia 17-14 in the other placement match. In the tournament
semi-finals, there were no surprises, as favourites The Netherlands
and Belgium defeated the Czech Republic and Germany respectively,
28-10 and 17-10.
The fact that Russia, who now cannot finish higher then 7th,
had defeated Germany, who are in the bronze medal playoff,
in the tournament group stages, demonstrates how closely matched
the teams are at this standard, and while Great Britain will
look back at a missed opportunity to make the semi-finals
when they produced their worst performance of the event against
Germany, this is the youngest senior British team at a major
event for many years and the team will only improve in the
run-up to the 2007 World Championships.
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