Day Four Blog from World Champs

New Zealand has beaten Canada to reach the last eight at the World Women's Team Championships in Nimes.

Day 5- Wednesday 14th

The knock out stages began today and our opponents in the Round of 16 were Canada. On paper, we looked as though we were clear favourites going into the match. However, Canada had other ideas and caused some concern at times!!

First onto court was Kylie, whose confidence and natural attacking game seemed to come and go throughout the match. Although Kylie seemed to have steadied the ship in the fifth game, her opponent's tactics were clearly to go for anything and everything. To her credit the ratio between unforced errors to outright winners worked in her favour at the very end and Kylie found herself on the wrong end of a 14-12 in the fifth score line.

Joelle took to the court next and began at a ferocious pace, but not always finding her targets with the ball. She lost a close first game before settling into the match and producing a comfortable, convincing victory in the end.

That left Jackie to finish the job off, and she played her trademark controlled deep game to prevent her opponent from having any chance of causing an upset.

A huge sigh of relief at the end and the team will look to build on this performance tomorrow against Malaysia.  The match will be live-streamed on the World Squash TV youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldSquashTV) from 4.30am Friday morning NZ time.

For full results: http://www.squashsite.co.uk/2009/wwt2012nimes.htm.