Nicola Cochrane urged Scotland’s women to tighten up their 7-0 demolition of Ukraine in their opening EuroHockey Championship II clash at Glasgow’s National Hockey Centre.
The national side, including several players from the Lothians, face the highly-fancied Czech Republic in Glasgow on Tuesday (18.00) in a match that could be pivotal in the qualifiers.
The Great Britain goalkeeper, who now plays for Nottingham side Beeston, said: “It was a good performance but we need to tighten up on a few areas, that game highlighted that.
“We need to take the good from Sunday into Tuesday.”
Cochrane, who lives in Somerset and is a hockey coach at Millfield School, had to make a quality save minutes from time to keep the shutout.
The 25-year-old said: “We switched off and we need to learn from that as it will get harder and harder as the tournament progresses.
“We need to make sure we are switched on for the whole game, not just for ten minutes at a time but we can fix that.”
Looking at the Czech Republic, who drew 2-2 with Austria in their opener, the Glasgow-born player added: “They will be tough and the girls played them recently and the game ended in a draw (Scotland lost after a shootout).
“We do know that this is going to be our toughest group game but we’re prepared, we’ve worked hard and we know exactly what we are going to do and, hopefully, we will get the points.”
The Czech Republic side are ranked No 21 in the world, two places below Scotland, but Cochrane, nicknamed Coco, said: “In these tournament you can never go by the ranking. Every team has come to win and you must take one game at a time and move on.”
Austria, ranked 31 in the world, come next on Wednesday (19.00) and the hot-stop added: “We will concentrate on the Czech Republic first and they we will move on to Austria.”
Experienced news, business, arts, sport and travel journalist. Food critic and managing editor of a well-established food and travel website. Also a magazine editor of publications with circulations of up to 200,000 and managing director of a long-established PR/marketing company with a string of blue-chip clients in its CV. Former communications lecturer at a Scottish university and social media specialist for a string of successful and busy SMEs.
