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African Hockey Olympics Qualifiers: Uganda 1 Ghana 7

The Hockey Cranes will have to return to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong after losing four games in a row at the African Hockey Olympics Qualifiers, the latest being a 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Ghana in the third-place play-off.

Coach Innocent Raskara believes his side put up a spirited fight but were just unlucky when it came to putting the ball in the back of the net on Sunday afternoon at the Pretoria University High-Performance Centre.

“We missed a lot of goal-scoring opportunities which cost us a fortune to leave the tournament with one victory,” Raskara noted.

Uganda conceded early in the first quarter and showed no signs of getting a grip on the game, and Ghana capitalised by exerting a lot of pressure on the opponent’s shaky defence.

Ghana also maximised on the lack of precision from Uganda’s midfielders who were unable to orchestrate perfect passes to the forwards.

Uganda’s inability to control the ball well also enabled Ghana to intercept Ugandan passes and forward Colline Batusa attributed their poor performances to ill preparations.

“Had we prepared well for the tournament, we would have performed better since apart from South Africa, the other sides we faced were familiar since we faced them last year at the Hockey African Cup of Nations,” Batusa who scored Uganda’s consolation goal said.

Uganda’s focus now turns to next year’s all-African games in Accra, Ghana, where they seek to make amends for a forgettable outing in Pretoria.