University of Johannesburg coach Tsoanelo Pholo says their narrow win over Wits yesterday will provide a massive boost for the team in the second leg of the Varsity Hockey women’s tournament this weekend.<\/p>\n
In winning a tense Johannesburg derby 2-1 in their final game in Cape Town, the UJ outfit have placed themselves in fifth position on the log and they are still in with a chance of qualifying for the semifinals.<\/p>\n
The second leg takes place at North-West University in Potchefstroom from Friday to Sunday, followed by a round of play-off matches on Monday.<\/p>\n
Pholo said they would need to get off to a good start in their opening match in Potch against University of Cape Town.<\/p>\n
“The win over Wits gave us a huge psychological lift, but we have a big match against UCT on Friday,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They had a great run on their home turf and it will be interesting to see how they perform at high altitude.<\/p>\n
“We need to maintain our momentum because this weekend will decide the semifinalists, so everybody will be gunning for that.”<\/p>\n
In winning two of their four matches in Cape Town, UJ were only outplayed by the quality Stellenbosch outfit, losing 7-0.<\/p>\n
Their opening match against Free State went to a penalty shootout, which UJ narrowly lost 6-5, while they defeated defending champions UP-Tuks 4-3.<\/p>\n
Pholo said she was encouraged by the way the players fought back each time after suffering a loss.<\/p>\n
“Of course there is plenty of room for improvement, but what I am proud about is the way we were able to bounce back from those defeats.<\/p>\n
“To beat the defending champs was a major boost for us mentally and we were able to show the same sort of resilience in beating Wits.<\/p>\n
“The girls are very happy at this stage, if somewhat tired after four games in four days.<\/p>\n
“They really executed well against Wits and worked hard on defence. I was delighted with the maturity they showed and it was a massive three points to take into this weekend.”<\/p>\n
After Friday’s game against UCT, UJ face Madibaz on Saturday and North-West University, who lead them on goal difference, in their final round-robin match on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
University of Johannesburg coach Tsoanelo Pholo says their narrow win over Wits yesterday will provide a massive boost for the team in the second leg of the Varsity Hockey women’s tournament this weekend. In winning a tense Johannesburg derby 2-1 in their final game in Cape Town, the UJ outfit have placed themselves in fifth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1768,30,1968,1733,1966],"class_list":["post-28764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-hockey","tag-news","tag-uj-hockey","tag-university-of-johannesburg","tag-varsity-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}