North West sneak into semifinal

With just 30 seconds left on the clock, North West managed to sneak into the semifinals of the Spar Interprovincial Women's Hockey tournament on Thursday.

Last-gasp goal scoring seems to have become a speciality of the team who on Wednesday scored three goals in the final 19 minutes of their game against Midlands to keep their semifinal hopes alive.

And, after KwaZulu-Natal went down 1-2 to Western Province on Thursday, it was up to North West to defeat Mynahs (KZN's second team) by a seven-goal margin in order to make it into the final four. By half-time they had notched up a 3-0 lead and by the final minute, had added another three, Mariska van der Merwe scoring four of the six.

Then, as the seconds ticked by, one last drive from Lienie van der Post saw the team who finished eighth last year booking a surprise spot in today's semifinal, thereby relegating KZN to the fifth to eight place playoffs.

Earlier in the day, KZN had provided defending champions Western Province with their first tough encounter of the competition so far.

A tight first half saw the KZN side absorbing some serious pressure, but they prevailed and managed to keep the score at 0-0 until the break.

It wasn't until the 45th minute that Province broke the deadlock and then it was thanks to what can only be described as a soft goal, considering the storm the KZN defenders had weathered until that point.

Province's second goal came from a penalty stroke, taken by captain Anli Kotze in the 66th minute. And while KZN managed to come back with one goal a minute later after Marlise Joubert converted a penalty corner, they couldn't score again.

And that cost them dearly after North West's antics, which saw them through to the semifinals because of a superior goal count.

"We expected this to be tight because we knew this would be our toughest game so far," said Kotze afterwards.

"But I think that was good for us because we need to practice our defending.

"We actually would have preferred to have one or two more games like this in the pool round because I think we still need to work on passing, defending more confidently and communicating more effectively within the team."

Province will face an even tougher task on Friday when they come up against the impressive SA Under-21 side (who defeated Free State 14-0 on Thursday) in the semifinal.

"They've been playing a lot together and had a series against the French a few weeks ago, so it's going to be a good game.

"We are really looking forward to it," said Kotze.

"They've got some exciting youngsters coming through, so we have a tough game ahead of us."

Friday's other semifinal will be contested between tournament favourites Southern Gauteng, who defeated Peninsula 8-0, and North West.

Meanwhile, in other games on Thursday, hosts Midlands and Witwatersrand played to a 4-4 draw, while Northerns beat Eastern Province 2-0.