Hockey: England's goal famine: Striking problems may bring change of old guard

SANDIE LISTER, the England captain, believes that higher world standards were partly due to her team finishing ninth out of 12 in the Waterford Crystal World Cup in Dublin, writes Bill Colwill.

'My only doubt before the tournament was that we were not converting enough scoring chances,' Lister said. 'We were well prepared and confident and expected to do well but we feel we let the management down and ourselves to some extent. I don't believe England have gone down but world standards have gone up.'

Although more time and money had been spent on preparing the team for Dublin than ever before, there is no suggestion that the 16 players did not give everything.

However, they scored just twice from 27 penalty corner attempts and three times from 57 open-play shots.

There will be those who felt the original selection was wrong. There was no player in the Dublin squad from last year's England Under-21 World Cup team whereas the Argentinian team, who finished runners-up, had nine.

The semi-finalists in Dublin all had exciting, fast wingers. Argentina's Karina Masotta, Germany's Heike Latzsch, Michelle Andrews, the Australian, and America's Kelli James all played wide and scored goals. England's build-up usually came from Jane Sixsmith, who tried to bore her way through the middle of packed defences.

The modern game requires midfield players to come through and score goals. England's first-choice midfield trio have 355 caps between them but just 15 goals.

The good news for England is that Maggie Souyave, who takes over from Sue Slocombe as England's coach as Slocombe moves on to prepare Great Britain for the Olympic qualifier in November 1995, was in Dublin. She is likely to have become aware that English players need to work on their technical skills and shooting.