Vitality Hockey Women's World Cup:The Netherlands completes the semi-finals line up
Defending champions the Netherlands completed the semi-final line up of the Vitality Hockey Women's World Cup defeating the Olympic champions and the hosts England 2-0 in London on Thursday. The Netherlands will play Australia while Spain will take on Ireland in the semi finals on Saturday. The defending champions, who look unbeatable, have taken their goals tally to 28 and conceded only two in four games it has played so far notching up in the process the biggest ever victory margin of 12-1 against Italy in the pool games. The Netherlands have been the winners of World Cup seven times and runners up on four other occasions. The defending Olympic champions and the hosts tried to put up a fight against the Dutch and succeeded in restricting the margin to two goals. The first goal of the match came in the 14th minute when Ledwiej Welten found the target. It was a field goal and the culmination of a brilliant move. After changing ends, the Dutch consolidated the lead immediately afterwards with another brilliant field goal, this time by Laurien Leurink. England did try to reduce the margin and even substituted the goalkeeper with an extra offender six minutes before the final whistle but could not get past the Dutch defence. It was eighth win for the Netherlands over England in as many encounters.
