Thrilling last period ends better for Japan – 05.12.2017

Japan and Australia met in a match, which would decide who is going to fight for 13th place. The winner of this match would face the winner of the match between Thailand and Singapore, while the losers of those matches would meet in a battle for 15th place.

Australia did not have a good start into the first period and Japan scored the first goal. Yui Goto scored in the third minute and put Japan in the lead for quite a long time. Unfortunately for them, five minutes before the end of the first period, they scored an own goal and equalized the game. Australia got back in the match and slowly started putting Japan under pressure.

The match got really balanced during the second period with no obviously dominant team. Both Australia and Japan had good shots on goal, but the only one to score was Mahiro Shimizu, assisted by Yui Goto.  After that, things got even worse for Australia as they had to defend Japan’s powerplay, when Fiona Cameron was given a 2-minute penalty. However, Australia’s defense worked well and the score remained unchanged, 2-1 for Japan.

Right from the start of the last period, Australia got very unlucky and got scored against in the first minute. Yui Goto made it 3-1 for Japan and pushed her team closer to the win. Rin Ozawa added one more goal as things started to look very bad for Australia. But if you expect they gave up, you are wrong. They managed to score three goals (Tara Meyer, Blaise Hodges, Ruby Wright) and almost equalized the game. Unfortunately for them, the last goal was missing, so the final score was 5-4 for Japan.

Best players:
Australia: #10 Blaise Hodges
Japan: #3 Yui Goto