The South African men’s and women’s teams rewrote the history books at the Indoor World Hockey Cup in Pretoria on Thursday as they secured first-ever quarterfinal berths.
Mustapha Cassiem scored a last-gasp goal to give South Africa a 6-5 victory over flamboyant tournament debutants Argentina, who beat Iran and the US.
Six of the women scored to beat New Zealand 6-3.
Until Thursday, the best finishes by South Africa at this event were ninth by the women and 10th by the men. Now neither can do worse than the top eight. In the traditional field version of the game the women once ended seventh, though that was in 1998.
Both sides will learn their opponents for Friday later on Thursday.
The men probably produced their best performance of the competition to date, showing tighter defence, sharper shooting and better control, three times building up leads, all of which were eliminated.
But they never trailed.
Dayaan Cassiem scored the first with a sharp reverse flick from a tight angle and Mustapha made it 2-0 a few minutes later.
The Argentinians equalised in the second quarter, but Chad Futcher made it 3-2, collecting the ball after a great dance upfield by Mustapha and getting the ball past the rapidly advancing goalkeeper.
“I was pretty much staring at Musi,” said Futcher. “The brilliance of him coming up the middle of the field was stunning. I had a lucky break when the ball came.
“The keeper was coming out, I saw out the corner of my eye and luckily he went down, I went over him.”
Argentina equalised through a penalty stroke.
Dayaan and Futcher each scored again to make it 5-3 in the third quarter and again the Argentinians levelled matters, their fifth goal coming from a penalty stroke conceded by Mustapha who had knocked the ball away from the goal too hard for the umpire’s liking.
He protested the decision and showed his disapproval on-field during a brief break, holding his stick up with disbelief on his face.
Mustapha wears his heart on his sleeve and showed a level of frustration and irritation when his brother failed to gather a pass.
“We spoke a lot about being on the far post and getting in the right area, so I think we’re hard on each other and we demand a lot from each other, especially in games.”
Mustapha had the final say as he slotted the winner in the final minute of the match.
“It’s emotional because we have so many fans out here, little kids that we’re trying to inspire, that’s for my family, that’s for them.”
And Mustapha was as impressed with the all-round effort from his teammates. “We spoke about how important it is to secure ourselves a quarterfinal, so I think the boys were up for it, everyone gave everything. Ja, man, I love this team. We’re a close bunch and we put up a good performance.”
The women, who pulled off a stunning 1-0 win over Australia on Wednesday, took a while to get going against the winless Kiwis.
Tegan Fourie slotted a great effort just before halftime to give the home side a 1-0 lead.
“After a tough game last night [Wednesday] we struggled to get the legs going,” said Jess O’Connor, one of the goal-scorers.
“It seems our first touches were off, our connections were off and we were struggling. We had the chances, we had many missed opportunities. I think we were all getting a bit frustrated, we were all getting flustered, so at half-time we said to ourselves ‘guys, let’s just take it down a notch ... let’s focus on one pass at a time’, and that’s what we did.”
They hit back with three goals in the third quarter, from player of the match Daniela de Oliveira, O’Connor, who slammed the ball in after De Oliveira had fumbled her collection at a penalty corner, and Jessica Lardant.
Laiken Brisset and Kayla de Waal added two more goals in the fourth quarter, though New Zealand scored their goals in the final 10 minutes.
“Towards the end of the game we had tired legs on the field,” said O'Connor.
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