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Kookaburras beat Great Britain to all but confirm quarter-final spot

The Kookaburras did not do as well as Australia had hoped. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Expert
10th August, 2016
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The Australian Kookaburras have put in an improved performance to take a 2-1 victory over Great Britain at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

The victory for the Kookaburras should almost confirm their spot in the quarter-finals, which could have been in jeopardy if they had lost today after some less-than-impressive performances over the past couple of days.

The Kookaburras were coming into the match against Great Britain having not scored a goal in two matches, and worryingly it was looking like that trend would continue as they went into three-quarter time in a scoreless deadlock.

» Re-live the Kookaburras game with our live blog

There we plenty of chances for both teams throughout those first three-quarters, but neither team looked like they were going to break the deadlock and score a goal before the game opened up in the last ten minutes as desperation kicked in.

The British team were very sluggish during the first quarter, and so it was frustrating for the Kookaburras that they couldn’t find a way to score.

The second and third quarters were much tighter as a contest with defence again being the order of the day.

Australia had a pair of penalty corners during the third quarter – but couldn’t execute as well as a couple of other forays into the circle.

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A defensive lapse almost allowed Britain to score as the third quarter came to an end with only some great goal keeping stopping Britain taking the lead.

Aran Zalewski would be the man to get Australia on the board after Daniel Beale made a great run and move into the circle, putting a ball there for Zalewski who slapped it into the backboard.

It would only take a couple of minutes for Australia to crash in with another goal with Jake Wheaton the man to hand the Aussies what turned out to be an unassailable lead.

It was again Beale to get the play going with a fantastic defensive effort before Simon Orchard went on the counter-attack, setting up a massive numbers game with a four-on-one break and Wheaton would be the man to send it through.

Britain would answer with their first goal just two minutes from time through Ashley Jackson who drilled it into the right corner of the net off a penalty corner.

Despite having a couple of minutes on the clock, Britain couldn’t make anything happen to tie the game up and the Kookaburras took an important victory.

Australia now move on to face the bottom-ranked Brazil in a game that they will need to score a lot of goals in as a confidence booster moving forward.

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Final Score
Australian Kookaburras 2
Great Britain 1

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