Walsh livid at players for poor show against NZ

New Delhi: He might have had encouraging words for his wards irrespective of defeat in their tournament opener, but India's chief coach Terry Walsh was livid with the home team's performance against New Zealand today and termed the showing as "unacceptable".

After losing 0-2 to England last night, India were overwhelmed 1-3 by New Zealand in their second Pool A match at the Hero Hockey World League Final here and Walsh did not mince words to criticise the players.

"We made a lot of unforced errors in executing our skills. We played very slowly. We were horrible with penalty corner conversions. It is very frustrating to miss opportunities," Walsh said after the match.

"Our performance was sub-standard and unacceptable. We perform well in training but when it comes to performing under pressure we falter. The way we played it showed the opponent was too good for us," the Australian added.

New Zealand coach Colin Batch was full of praise for his boys especially after the 1-6 drubbing at the hands of Germany yesterday.

"I am very happy with our performance. We implemented our tactics well today unlike the Germany match," he said.