Great Britain triumph in Olympic qualification opener
BySportsbeat
Published 12/02/2016 at 10:02 GMT
Mark Richardson's late goal ensured that Great Britain's men's ice hockey team started their bid to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics with a dramatic 6-5 victory over Netherlands.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
With 55:48 minutes on the clock, defenceman Richardson netted the winner from his own rebound in the Group G pre-qualifiers clash in Cortina.
Great Britain have not qualified for the Olympics since 1948 and must top the group also containing Serbia and hosts Italy to progress to the final stage of qualifying in September.
They got off to the worst possible start on Thursday evening when Ronald Wurm gave Netherlands the lead but goals from Russ Cowley, David Phillips and Matthew Myers soon made it 3-1.
Two goals in 55 seconds from the Netherlands levelled proceedings and they equalised on two further occasions to cancel out efforts from Cowley and Colin Shields before Richardson's winner.
And with GB's second group game against Serbia set for Saturday afternoon, coach Pete Russell believes the win has silenced a few critics.
"I hear people say that GB struggle to score goals, but here we proved we can score and score at important times," said Russell.
"I am not going to be disappointed with the outcome as the result was the important thing.
"Yes, there are things we can work on and do better at, but getting that win is vital for us. We dug deep and we scored a lot of goals.
"We can now recharge of our batteries and get ready for our second game."
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