Goal by goal: Joanna Wray blogs from Turkey - Day Two

This evening we had our second match against the host team Turkey.  The game started well with both teams having a number of attacks but neither managing to finish them with a goal.  But the deadlock was eventually broken by a soft goal from Turkey who went 1-0 up. 

The game then became very physical with a number of exclusions throughout the quarter.

We came back and scored through Scott Carpenter matching their goal but again Turkey attacked.  The second quarter didn’t start well. A few mistakes from us led to Turkey scoring their chances.  The game then became very physical with a number of exclusions throughout the quarter.  We finished at half time 5-2 down.

The third quarter came and again we didn’t seem to be able to look collective in attack and the goal chances we had were lost.  Turkey continued their play and scored five more goals to our three. We  finished the quarter 10-5 down. 

The physicality of the game didn't stop in the last quarter, but we did start to organize ourselves better in attack and stopped the Turks better with a number of blocks in defense.  We won the last quarter 2-0 but it didn’t help to win the match. The final score saw us 10-7 down.

Overall our team did not look as collective as the first game against Ukraine.  The Turks were a much stronger side, both more physical and more tactical than the first game.  Our man-ups worked well but we couldn’t score from open play whereas the Turks scored a variety of goals from centre forward, the wings and through counterattack. 

It was a disappointing performance after such a positive start with our first game as a full squad yesterday. We play Belarus tomorrow

Game statistics

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