New Zealand

By David Long at Lloyd Elsmore Park Hockey Stadium

The New Zealand Black Sticks were forced to make another dramatic comeback to win their Olympic Games Qualifying match against Ukraine on Monday evening.

Just like in their first game, New Zealand went down to two early goals from Ukraine and had to put in a huge performance in the second half to eventually win the match 3-2.

The sloppy play by New Zealand in the first half was replaced by a much more vigorous and concentrated effort spearheaded by captain Suzie Muirhead who dominated the midfield during the final 35 minutes.

Niniwa Roberts scored two of the comeback goals while Lisa Walton, who also had an exceptional game, scored the other goal for New Zealand

However, although the Black Sticks took three points from the match, coach Ian Rutledge will undoubtedly be unhappy with the slow starts his side have been making so far in this tournament and will need the players to be firing from the off to keep Olympic hopes alive.

Neither side was able to get any domination during the opening seven minutes, although the Black Sticks' Meredith Orr was effective in midfield in helping push New Zealand forward with nice passes.

However, it was Orr who was the guilty player in the move that led to Ukraine grabbing their first goal.

Orr casually tried to make a clearance on defence and gave the ball to Sivitlana Kolomiyets who ran 20 metres into the D and blasted the ball past Helen Clarke in the New Zealand goal.

And in a replay of Friday's game against Great Britain, the Black Sticks conceded another early goal, this time El'vira Dzhemilova found the net with a shot from close range in the 11th minute through a crowded space.

New Zealand were still unable to get into the game as the half went on and could have even gone 3-0 down Yana Vorushylo's close range effort went just wide to the left.

Later in the half New Zealand were able to finally exert some pressure and had two penalty corners in quick succession, but they were both deflected over the bar and then in the 25th minute they had a goal was disallowed for what appeared to be someone using their foot.

An indicator of just how bad the half was for the Black Sticks occurred in the 33rd minute when from a New Zealand penalty corner, Emily Naylor completely missed the pass out and Ukraine ended up quickly breaking and having a penalty corner themselves. And if wasn't for Clarke putting her body on the line New Zealand would have gone further behind.

The Black Sticks came out with a much-needed policy of all out attacking in the second half and put the Ukrainian goalkeeper under all sorts of pressure.

First of all captain Suzie Muirhead put a shot just over, then in the 41st minute they were able to pull a goal back when Niniwa Roberts blasted the ball home from a penalty corner.

Six minutes later the contest was all square again when Lisa Walton clipped the ball in after Iryna Zhukova failed to clear a cross from the right and at the far post Walton was on hand to bang in the equaliser.

The recovery for the Black Sticks was complete in the 57th minute when Roberts scored her second goal of the match after Walton's run sucked in the Ukrainian defenders and when she passed the ball to Roberts the prolific striker left Zhukova floundering in the goal with her powerful shot.

But it was Ukraine who finished the match the strongest and they had a number of chances to equalise, although no goal was forthcoming during a tense last five minutes.

New Zealand finish off their pool matches with a game against the highly fancied Germans on Wednesday.

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