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Grand double for Australian hockey

Australian striker Stephen Davies scored twice in a 3-1 victory over South Korea in the final of the Champions Trophy men's field hockey competition yesterday.

Davies and Troy Elder boosted the Commonwealth Games champion to a 2-0 hal-ftime lead while Song Seung-Tae replied for South Korea after Davies grabbed a second.

The win gave Australia a rare gold medal in top class men's competition after a decade of spectacular failure and it claimed the men's and women's double as the two competitions were played at the same venue for the first time.

Australia's women's team, the Olympic champions, beat The Netherlands 3-2 yesterday.

The tournament has been marred by complaints over a new rule on foot contact and Pakistan, which was eliminated from the six-nation competition for the first time in the tournament's 21-year history, had been most vocal.

The rule was aimed at speeding up action, which it has, but players have argued that it makes the game too physically demanding and restricts goalscoring possibilities.

There was little sign of the second concern in today's matches with 18 goals in three games. England secured its place in next year's tournament with a 4-3 overtime defeat of Pakistan and The Netherlands took bronze with a 5-2 thumping of Spain.

Pakistan officials were adamant that the new rule was biased against their team because most of its goals come from penalty-corners.

So there was some irony about the goal which sent them out of next year's tournament at the expense of Germany, coming from James Wallis off a penalty-corner in the ninth minute of extra-time.

"I think we have learnt plenty of lessons,'' said England captain William Waugh. It was our aim when we came here to go to the next one and we cut it a bit fine, but we have done what we set out to achieve.''

Olympic champions The Netherlands did well to finish with bronze after a dismal start to the competition where it opened with two losses and a draw.

Coach Maurits Hendriks said the poor start would help the team in the future.

"I will not forget the first three days of this tournament ever again,'' Hendriks said. "We have always said to each other, we have to win the last match of the tournament to go out on a high. Sometimes it's a better feeling to win your last game, than to lose a final.''

Spain led after 17 minutes through Javier Arnau, but Dutch captain Stephen Veen scored twice within 10 minutes before Remco van Wijk added a third. Arnau got his second early in the second half but goals to Marten Eikelboom and Van Wijk wrapped up the medal.

AP