GORDON SHEPHERD, Scotland's coach, had targeted the match against Italy as crucial to his side's survival in the European Nations Championships and his charges responded with a 3-1 win in the pouring rain in London yesterday.
Shepherd's aspirations of a sixth-place finish looked a forlorn hope when the Italians totally dominated the first half, but fortunately the scoresheet remained blank at the interval. The key to the victory was a blistering 10-minute spell after the interval when the Italians were drowned by three penalty-corner goals from captain Leigh Fawcett, Becky Merchant on her 100th cap and Wildcats' Kareena Marshall.
The Scots now take the three points over into a relegation pool competition with games against either Spain or Belgium and Poland to come in the next few days.
The statistics showed that the Italians had 90 per cent of the possession in the opening quarter leaving the Scots chasing shadows. But crucially Italy failed to take advantage of four penalty corners during that period. The first three were blocked by Marshall, Aileen Davis and goalkeeper Gibson while the final effort went wide.
The Scots at last created some scoring opportunities in the second quarter but Nikki Lloyd and Emily Maguire both failed to really trouble Martina Chirico in the Italian goal.
Shepherd's words of encouragement to his charges are probably unprintable but his underachievers suddenly burst into action. In only 51 seconds and against the run of play, Nikki Kidd's drag flick at a penalty corner was blocked by the goalkeeper, Vikki Bunce had a try at the rebound but it was left to a kneeling Fawcett to roll the ball home.
The Scots doubled their advantage at their eighth set-piece of the quarter, a goalmouth scramble came from Emily Maguire's shot with Merchant on hand to force the ball over the line off a defender's foot.
Chiara Tiddi pulled one back for the Italians, but Shepherd's charges were not to be denied, a penalty-corner shot by Davis was brilliantly deflected past the stranded goalkeeper by Marshall.
The Scots calmly played out the final quarter despite a sin-bin visit by Nikki Skrastin to take the valuable three points.
"The girls were tentative in the first half, at the interval I told them they needed to step it up and get some self belief if they wanted to get the required result, and that`s exactly what they did," said a delighted Shepherd.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel