Wales senior women fell victim to the quality of Uruguay’s penalty corners in the second match of their Tri-Nations Series.
An early penalty corner saw Uruguay take the lead two minutes into the match through Amadeo Sol.
The sides were well matched, with Wales being ranked 24th in the world and Uruguay just one place behind in 25th.
Wales exerted a lot of attacking pressure in the second and third quarters despite being faced by an intense, high Uruguay press but were unable to reap the rewards of multiple penalty corners.
Uruguay doubled their lead in the 45th minute through another well executed corner, with Curutchague Lupe converting for the hosts.
The officially recognised international test match saw first senior international caps awarded to Maisie Riley, Betsan Thomas, Amy Cradden and Sophia Crawshay.
Player Izzie Howell said, “We’re a bit disappointed in the scoreline but I’m proud of the team tonight we worked super hard.
We put in the effort but next time we need to bring the quality and that’s what’s great about this tournament is that we can challenge Uruguay again having learnt and reassessed”.
Head Coach Kevin Johnson commented, “Despite the obvious disappointment of losing the game tonight and paying the price for a slow start and an early goal concede, from there on we took the game to Uruguay and were unlucky to not make more of the amount of possession we had in their half and will rue the small details we didn’t quite get right.
Losing a second goal in the final quarter when we were in the ascendancy was a sucker punch we will have to take on the chin but again a lot of positive and encouraging signs from this young group to work from and to put right when we play the hosts again.”
Wales will next play Chile on Sunday the 18th of June at 10pm UK time.