After beating Tokelau comfortably in their major semi match on Friday, PNG faced the might of the Fijian offense after they beat the Cook Islands in a very tight contest 52 to 50 for the right to play for Gold, also on Friday afternoon.
Yesterday the Pepe's and the Fijians met in a game that the pundits were split on. From all accounts, it could have gone either way and it was the Fijians that in the end had to dig deep to keep the Pepe's from causing an upset.
The final score according to the Cook Islands News website was 58 - 51 to Fiji.
Mike Petrides and Pole Kassman will have their say in the post match reviews when they return to PNG, but our Pepe's are still in very good standing and no doubt will continue to be watched by the likes of the Cooks, Fiji and Samoa.
Gold still eludes the Pepe's but the respect they command from their better provisioned Pacific Island sisters makes them very, very competitive.
The Mini Games team returns over the next few days and we congratulate the Pepe's for bringing home Silver. Overall PNG did not fair very well at these Games managing to come 11th out of 14 countries.
I am developing an image library for Near the Hoop on Google's Picasa and will advise once constructed.
Again congratulations to the Pepe's
Sunday, September 27, 2009
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Hi Simon
ReplyDeletePost match - yep it was a result that could have gone the Pepes way, as the Pepes had their chances particularly in the 2nd quarter to take control of the game. The Q1 score was 15 each and approx halfway through the 2nd Qtr the Pepes were leading by 3 and pressing for 4, but poor pass selection and dropped balls cost the side dearly and they went into the main break down 2 goals 27 -29. The 3rd qtr did not start well for the Pepes and they found themselves down by 11 at one point, but clawed their way back to be down by 8 at the end of the 3rd qtr. The injection of 19 year old GK Nisha Omi paid off and the Pepes mounted a late challenge to the Fijians reducing their lead to 3 goals with under 3 mins to go, and pressing for another goal but the miss was rebounded by the Fijians who converted to take the lead back to 4 and regain possession with a wayward centre pass. The Pepes battled to the end but to no avail with Fiji converting the last shot of the match after the siren and winning by a margin of 7. As I said the Pepes again had their chances, but handling mistakes at crucial times cost them dearly. Crowd support for both sides was fantastic and matched the electricity on court. PS - Fiji agreed to a request from PNG to have the match sanctioned by IFNA for world ranking purposes, with IFNA endorsing the requested with IFNA appointing NZ umpires in line with their umpiring standards. I'll send you through a team photo to include.