Germany’s last-gasp goal crushes Kookaburras’ Hockey World Cup tilt | Hockey

Australia’s men’s hockey team will have to wait until next year’s Olympics to get back to the pinnacle of hockey after India’s Kookaburras’ most painful World Cup campaign.

Coach Colin Batchs’ side looked shell-shocked as they left the pitch in Bhubaneswar on Friday, beating old rivals Germany 4-3 with their dream of a second global finals appearance dashed by a goal after just six seconds.

In an extraordinary finish, the Kookaburras took a 3-2 lead despite having played much of the match with two minutes and 35 seconds remaining and looked set to hold off the Germans just as they did in the semi-finals at the Tokyo Olympics.

But then they surrendered to drag-flick master Gonzalo Peillat, Argentina’s one-time Olympian-turned-German national, who completed a second-half hat trick from the penalty corner with just 1:42 left on the clock.

Another famous German comeback was almost inevitable when man of the match Niklas Wellen struck the winner just when a penalty shootout looked certain.

But the Kookaburras, one of the world’s great sports teams without a World Cup or Olympic win since 2014, could have no complaints.

More passive than their opponents, they may have been the authors of their own downfall as Tom Craig was given his marching orders for another green card offense amid a desperate defensive scramble.

With Australia at 10, that could have made all the difference as Wellen was free to latch on to Peillats’ cross to change the clock to 59 minutes 54 seconds.

“Whatever you ask, I don’t know the answer,” beamed Wellen as he wondered how on earth Germany had run away like they did against England in the quarter-finals when he clawed back from two late on to win.

Against England, 55 minutes were mostly rubbish and we turned it around in the last few minutes with a lot of luck, Wellen assessed.

But today we played a great game. Australia are so dangerous on the counter-attack and they took advantage of that, but we believe in each other and I knew when we were 3-2 down they would have at least one chance to get away.

But turning it around in normal time was crazy.

Germany had largely dominated and created the lion’s share of chances against the world number one Kookaburras, but were still 2-0 down after an 11th-minute penalty corner from tournament leading scorer Jeremy Hayward and Nathan Ephraums’ counter-attack just before half-time.

It was Haywards’ 99th goal for Australia in his 199th appearance and took his tournament lead to eight.

But the Germans, who had significantly reduced another two-goal deficit in the dying minutes against England in the quarter-finals, equalized through Peillat with two penalty corners either side of the end of the third quarter.

Blake Govers then produced a superb high-resistance strike to give Australia a late lead – his 127th goal for his country – but it only forced the Germans to take out their keeper in a desperate and successful late comeback.

In Sunday’s final, the Germans face reigning champions Belgium, who later beat their Dutch neighbors 3-2 on penalties after the match ended 2-2.

It may be difficult for the Kookaburras to wake up earlier on Sunday for the third-place match against the Dutch.