It is unfortunate that we played so well still we lost in the dying minute of play as was happening in the past also. The players should be mentally and physically more strong to avoid this last minute lapses.
Shame! can't hold on to the nerves in the crucial moments. old problems like poor trapping,tacklings, poor defence still persists.it's high time we take the blame ourselves.better luck in the 2008 Olympics.
Again it was a nail biting finish in favour of Australia. We too played very well.Australia played more aggressively. Once again the last minute goal cost us the game. I don't understand why we can't pass the ball to each other to get rid of the final seconds.
Well, India can learn from that. It is still 'All is not lost' we have a match against N.Zealand which we can win easily IF we play sensibly.
It is very sad that all 50-50 situations were awarded in favour of Australia.The mistake which India committed was that they lost possesion in the dyeing seconds of the game when they were reduced to only ten men.Even a draw could have kept their hopes alive depending on the outcome of the Holland-Australia encounter.It would have have been a must win game for Australia.In hockey a team defends well when it's attack does well.But the players were not confident to attack them exept Vikram pillay.They seemed to fear Australians and the Dutch simply because they were stronger teams on paper.They were rather luckier teams than stronger.
Shame on John Wright who still can not came out of color descrimination. He purposely sent Dhanraj off the field by yellow card. Indian official should oppose the behavior of Umpire.
India should stop playing hockey and produce more umpires first. these umpires should be trained to be harsh and unfair to non asian countries and then only we would be able to pay them back. pillay was sent off and immediately attacks from india dried up. it has always been the case that umpires are biased towards india. it is time someone took this up. this cant go on forever.
The Indian Hockey is at its nadir, in my opinion this is a fact and we had to better accept this. We are just not good team to win laurells at the International level. We ahould stop giving excuses like the umpires were harsh or we didn't play to our potential or some such excuses. When we win means we win and we lose means we lose, thats it.
I think days are not far when we may not even qaulify for olympics. People like Gill et al. should hang their head in shame!
