We saw huge disappointment today in our GB Mens faces in the Copper Box. 21:32 was definitely not the score the guys were aiming for this afternoon. Unfortunately, 45 minutes of great Handball was not enough to vanquish Argentina.

One could see that this was the Game that our GB Men have prepared for the most and their strategy seemed to work very well against the Argentineans at first.

It was a very close game until 25 minutes into the game when the score was 11:13 to Argentina. Chris McDermott led the defence very well by commanding and defending excellently himself. Also Martin Hare, who hasn’t been playing that much so far this tournament, had an excellent impact on the defence. All players defended collectively which made it very difficult for Argentina to score and allowed GB to fast break a couple of times. Mark Hawkins (4) took responsibility and scored all of his fast breaks being the first one at the front after man-marking Diego Simonet for the entire Match. The Spectators were on fire in the Copper Box. Our Team felt inspired by the crowd and play a fantastic first half.
Only in the last 5 minutes of the first half they let the Gauchos run away into an unfortunate halftime result of 11:16.

The South American Champion upped a gear in the second half and overran our Team by punishing every mistake with a fast break goal. The half time whistle broke our GB player’s rhythm…
Instead of it still being a tight Match the Argentineans raised the score and our GB Men couldn’t recover anymore.

The last 10 Minutes belonged to the GB Team again. Fantastic defence by Daniel McMillan in particular, showing their full potential and playing Handball at it’s finest… However it was too late… GB loses to Argentina 21:32… But this is what we want to see again when GB rocks the Copper Box again on Saturday morning at 9.30am against Tunisia.

Text: Simon Wittlin
Photo: Nigel Farrow