Friday’s games opened with China playing South Africa for 11th place. The game was full of goals, 48 in total – a record for an 11th place game. Purists may say that the defences were not up to scratch but the goals still had to be scored and resulted in an entertaining game. The final score was 26-22 in China’s favour.
For the ninth place match India resumed their rivalry with Australia. In their previous match Australia had let slip a two goal lead with less than two minutes left but there was no mistake this time. Australia worked hard to get a commanding lead of 15-6 at half time. Although India outscored Australia in the second half (11-7) it was not enough to prevent a five goal win for Australia by 22 goals to 17.
Seventh place was clinched by Portugal over Hong Kong China. The European team was rather too strong for its Asian opponents but nevertheless a total of 51 goals were scored with Portugal winning 32-19.
Interesting statistics 
South Africa had never before scored more than 17 goals in an IKF U23 World Championship (when beating Germany for 5th place in 1998). This score of 22 equals their highest ever total by their senior team when beating Poland in the 2007 IKF WC.
Hong Kong China scored as many goals in their last two matches as they did in the whole of the 2008 championship (40).
Rankings:
7th      Portugal
8th      Hong Kong China
9th      Australia
10th    India
11th    China
12th    South Africa

Today we found out which teams will participate in the lower ranking games tomorrow and the higher placings on Saturday. In the top ranking semi-finals The Netherlands eassily beat a tired looking Chinese Taipei 35 -17 and Belgium beat Germany 22 – 11. Therefore, once again, The Netherlands will play Belgium in the final. Chinese Taipei will compete for the bronze against Germany. In the middle order semis, Catalonia defeated Hong Kong China 23 -10 and will meet England for 5th place on Saturday following England’s win over Portugal by 17 goals to 14. Given the way these two teams performed the day before this result was a little unexpected but England rediscovered their strong defence (rather necessary as neither team scored for over 10 minutes in the closing stages of the game). The game for 7th place takes place tomorrow.

 

Following today’s early matches it was determined that South Africa will play tomorrow for 11th place against China after losing to India 13 – 19, despite leading until the 45th minute. Australia, who beat China 23 -13, will meet India tomorrow for 9th place in a repeat of yesterday’s match where India came from behind to win in the last minute.

After the goal fest of the previous day the spectators must have been very disappointed with the number of goals witnessed today, except in the match between the Netherlands and Hong Kong China, which beat yesterday’s record aggregate with 68 goals and 47-21 score line. The best match of the day was Chinese Taipei against Portugal where the Chinese again came from behind to ‘escape’ with a win. At one time they were five behind and only led once in the whole match – for the most important last 10 seconds or so. The final score was 22 – 21). The game that decided which team from pool A would contest the semi-final against Belgium was awful by comparison. England, who had previously participated in the previous lowest aggregate score for this event against Australia two days before (33 goals), could not raise their game to anywhere near the level that they played against the Netherlands earlier in the week and were beaten by their old adversary Germany 17 – 13. It is worth noting that thirty goals was the exact number of goals scored just in the first half of last night’s Catalonia- Chinese Taipei match.

In the other matches India came from two goals behind in the last two minutes to beat Australia 22 – 21. They had, in fact, led by four at half time but let Australia back into the game in the early minutes of the second half but got the right result for them in the end. Belgium easily beat China 34 – 11 and Catalonia beat South Africa 24 – 10.

For tomorrow’s semi-final matches  click here

 

 

 

 

Our IKF photographer in Barcelona, Marco Spelten,  again took many beautiful photos.

We start with a few photos from the match of the day Catalonia – Chinese Taipei.

Hongkong – Germany

China – Portugal

South Africa – Belgium

Netherlands – Australia

India – England

 

 

Sunday 14 October 2012 saw excellent matches with excitement and tension. See below some photographic impressions

Catalonia – Portugal

 

South Africa – China

Australia – HongKong

Germany – India

Netherlands – England

Chinese Taipei – Belgium