Japanese beat China and thanks to that they had fourth place in group C and got promotion to next round of the tournament.

At the beginning of the meeting Chinese players had a lot of problems with the effectiveness and scoring goals. They showed their good sides during  previous matches, so it would have seemed that it will also be similar during duel with Japan. However, the first fifteen minutes didn’t indicate that, because Japan had then seven goals while China only three. Later it was easier for China team to score goals, but the advantage of the Japanese women was crucial and thanks to that they were leading after the first half 14: 9.

Japan started second half from scoring four goals in a row. In the following minutes they kept the advantage, which gradually increased. This was the second Japanese victory at the championships. Thanks to that they promote to the next round  from the fourth place.

Japan – China 26:20 (14:9)

Japan: Kakizoe, Sakaki – Hashiguchi, Tsujino, Abe 4, Ito 5, Hattori, Yasuda 2, Okada 6, Hirano 3, Tanifuji 2, Kurebay, Emoto 1, Ujimura 1, Moriya 1, Ueda 1.

China: Song, Zou – Huang 1, Liu 2, Zhu J., Chen 1, Tang 3, Lian, Zhu M. 2, Zhou 7, Wang, Sun 3, Mingyue, Sun Miaomiao, Li, Doi, Dong 1.

QUOTES:

Bin Zhang (head coach of China): We are not satisfied with our result after preliminary group. Our young players had lack of experience and they did too many mistakes. The ability to make on-the-spot adjustments when encountering difficulties still requires more exercise. The result oscillated near the draw for only 8 minutes, after that our rate of shooting was really low. We will work on that in the future.

Wojciech Staniec, fot. PRESSFOCUS/ZPRP