Black Sticks admit they blew it

Hayden Shaw remains committed to hockey despite the disappointment of missing out on an Olympic men's semi-final.

The 27 year-old penalty corner star has switched back and forth between hockey and cricket in recent years but he said yesterday after New Zealand's 3-1 loss to world champions Germany that his heart was very much in the former camp these days.

"I'm enjoying it now," he said.

"I was struggling at the beginning of the year but I'm fit, much fitter than I've ever been and flicking it better than ever so I'm staying around."

New Zealand will play off for seventh and eighth against Pakistan tomorrow (3pm NZ time), a frustrating outcome given six days earlier they had a semifinal berth in the palm of their hand.

Captain Ryan Archibald admitted they had bombed a golden opportunity to be the first New Zealand men's team to make an Olympic semifinal since the gold medal-winning outfit in Montreal in 1976.

"It would've been good to draw with Spain (0-1) and get three points against China (2-2) but in the month leading up to the tournament we knew that this game would determine whether we went through to the semis," Archibald said.

"We haven't played them a lot in recent years but we played them twice a couple of months ago and used that as a real information gathering exercise so we were prepared with a sound game plan but they played pretty well."

New Zealand finished fourth in Pool A on seven points, behind group winners Spain (12), Germany (11) and Korea (7).

Archibald and Shaw both rued New Zealand's slow start against Germany yesterday, which saw them drop 2-0 behind after nine minutes of a game they needed to win.

Shaw also felt the inability to earn penalty corners worked against them. New Zealand only created one and Shaw scored from it but their only other clear scoring options fell to Phil Burrows in the first and Simon Child in the second and both narrowly missed.

As far as Shaw is concerned New Zealand were not good enough to make the last four and the statistics back that up, being seriously outplayed by Spain and against Germany where the opposition had 20 shots to New Zealand's eight and also four penalty corners to one.

"To be honest the Spanish game and this game we got dominated," Shaw said.

"You could say our defence was worthy of it but when we pushed forward we got cleaned out here today. If you look at the stats both Germany and Spain have dominated us so if we are realistic about it, no (we don't deserve to qualify)."

- © Fairfax NZ News