England and Australia through to semis

The frontrunners in group B faltered both in their final pool matches, but with semi-final spots already assured (barring an absolute thrashing in the case of the Kookaburras), only the order of the top two places was realistically at stake.
Asutralia, who limped to a 2-1 win over the tournament's most consistently inconsistent team, Pakistan, secured the top honours after England misfired their way to a 2-0 loss to Spain.
England were unable to compete with the Spanish and they lost 2-0.

Goals came from a Pau Quemada corner placed low by James Fair's left post on the stroke of half time, and a Roc Oliva strike in the 64th - Spain walked and passed through the defence leaving Oliva to finish from three metres.
England had a few chances, but as coach Jason Lee said after the game the team struggled to find the energy to compete. Both Lee and skipper Barry Middleton were disappointed with the performance, but greater challenges lie ahead."I think it's probably best just to put a line under that and move ahead to the semi-final," Lee said.
With four teams from group A still in semi-final contention - Netherlands, Germany, Korea and New Zealand - Lee said: "I think we can beat any of them so we don't have a preference."
In the Australia-Pakistan clash, the Asian side held a surprise 1-0 half-time lead, thanks to a trademark Sohail Abbas thunderbolt - high to Nathan Burgers' stick side in the 29th minute. It will probably be Sohail's last international goal and what a cracker, thanks for the memories mate.
Australia levelled in the 39th minute when Des Abbot was allowed to turn far too easily on his open-stick side and he took the invitation to slam a hard shot past Salman Akbar. Pakistan had a golden chance to lead but Shakeel Abassi blazed over in the 66th minute. The heartbreaker came down the other end two minutes later when Abbott deflected home to win the game for the Kookaburras.
Overall an excellent Pakistan performance which asks the question, how could they play so well against Spain and Australia and so badly against South Africa?
India and South Africa split six goals in a game which highlighted a flaw in the video referral system. With the scores level at 2-2 India had the ball in the South African net while the African champs were claiming a penalty corner at the other end. The Indian move started when the hosts took a quick 16-yard hit after a South African attack broke down. The video call was (correctly) penalty corner South Africa who duly obliged by converting through Austin Smith at the second attempt (47mins) at the second attempt.
The stopping or non-stopping of a counter-attack is a real problem area for team video referrals. One-nil up, seconds to play, defence outnumbered on a breakout, why not just appeal anyway?
India levelled the match through Shivendra Singh in the 65th minute despite some hreoics form Erasmus Pieterse in the SA goal. The match started with the South Africans stunning the crowd by taking the lead with a hard-hit running shot from Lloyd Norris-Jones in the eighth minute - old school hockey! The crowd noise was restored by Sarvanjit Singh (FG, 17mins) and Vikram Pillay (FG, 25). India's 2-1 half-time lead was wiped out in the fourth minute of the second period when Justin Reid-Ross tidied up a corner rebound from Adrian D'Souza's pads.
The hosts will now be playing off for seventh/eighth place. South Africa for ninth/10th.

Day 10 Preview

Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Korea are all in the running for semi-final places, (apologies to the Kiwis for writing you off yesterday - it was late and my maths failed!) which sets up a pretty exciting day's hockey all round. It's hard to see New Zealand beating Germany, but if Korea beat the Netherlands by three clear goals (by my maths) they will be ahead of the Dutch in the table, who then might lose out on a semi-final spot if the German result goes as expected.