IKF U23 WKC Minor Rankings Day

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