67 Goal Thriller Ends Day 4 of the IKF U23 WKC

Catalonia and Chinese Taipei left the field to a standing ovation after Chinese Taipei came from four goals down to narrowly beat hosts Catalonia 35 – 32 to stop a European clean sweep on day 4 of the IKF U23 WKC. The game turned when, midway through the second half with Chinese Taipei having reduced a four goal deficit to one goal, the Catalans missed two penalties. Chinese Taipei capitalised by drawing level and then opening out a four goal lead of their own with just six minutes left. Three times the gap was narrowed to two but eventually time ran out with Chinese Taipei winning by three in a game registering 67 goals. Jose Alvarez and Albert Parron Herrera were top scorers for the Catalans with 10 and 9 goals respectively but they were outshone by Shu Ping Chu who overcame her injury of yesterday to score a magnificent 12 goals. Another female player Pin-Fong Chen was next top scorer with 8. Jose is now the joint top scorer in the Championship with 26 goals, whilst Shu Ping Chu and Pin-Fong Chen head the female scorers list with 23 and 19 respectively.

The other five games demonstrated the superiority of European teams over those from the rest of the world. Germany beat Hong Kong China 33 – 9, Portugal beat China 36 – 11, Belgium beat South Africa 40 – 11, The Netherlands beat Australia 46 – 17 (63 goals being just two short of the aggregate in the final match) and England beat India 33 – 14. In total 315 goals were scored in the 6 matches (average 52.5 per game). The 67 goal aggregate is a record for an IKF U23 World Korfball Championship and is only exceeded by the 71 goals scored in one of the pool matches in the IKF World Korfball Championship held last year in China.