IT never rains but pours for the Zimbabwe Under-21 girls’ hockey team as they suffered their fourth straight defeat at the on-going 2023 International Hockey Federation (FIH) Hockey Women’s Junior World Cup in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Coming from three straight defeats in the group stages, Zimbabwe lost their plate match 2-0 against the hosts, Chile.
The host city for the World Cup is Santiago.
The match was played at the Centro Deportivo de Hockey Cesped, Estadio Nacional in Santiago.
Four games into the tournament, Zimbabwe is yet to score a goal and have conceded a massive 30 goals. In their first match, they lost 6-0 against South Korea before going on to succumb to a 8-0 thumping at the hands of Spain in their second match. Their heaviest defeat came at the hands of Argentina who hammered them 14-0.
In their plate match against Chile, two goals before the half time break where all there was between the two teams. The first goal of the match was a penalty corner from Munoz Constanza with eight minutes played on the clock.
In the second quarter, Gago Martina doubled Chile’s lead with yet another penalty corner goal to seal the victory for the hosts. Zimbabwe was disciplined on the field, receiving zero cards while their opponents, Chile, got three green warning cards.
This was the third meeting between the two nations at a similar tournament and Chile has now won two of those three outings. They last played each other in the 1989 World Cup where they faced off two times. Zimbabwe won the first encounter 1-0 before Chile won their second match with a similar scoreline.
Zimbabwe will play another plate match against Canada today.
Herald
