"Two yellow cards changed the game for us", said Roelant Oltmans Indian Hockey Coach

Rio de Janeiro: India chief coach Roelant Oltmans today said two yellow cards hurt the team badly and that resulted in its 1-2 loss to the Netherlands in a pool B men's hockey match at the Rio Olympic Games here today.

"We were on the attacking side until we got two yellow cards, which was a gamechanger. You had to fight with one or two less. That's not only difficult to score a goal but it also took away a lot of energy from the players that I'm not happy about it," Oltmans said.

The Netherland, world number two and London Olympics silver medallists, scored both their goals from penalty corners through Rogier Hoffman (32nd minute) and Mink van der Weerden (54th), while India's lone goal came from the stick of VR Raghunath (38th).

The Indians dished out some valiant defending in the final stages of the third quarter when they were reduced to nine men. With little more than three minutes left for the quarter to end, SV Sunil and Raghunath had to sit out for five minutes after getting yellow cards from separate incidents.

"We should be proud how tough we have made it. Tomorrow (against Canada in Pool B concluding match) you will see a fresh India," Oltmans, also the team's High Performance director, said.

Trailing 1-2 with four minutes left, India withdrew goalkeeper PR Sreejesh for an additional forward and pressed hard for the equaliser. Their efforts bore fruit as India earned their fourth penalty corner six seconds from the hooter after appealing for a video referral.

That penalty corner resulted in four more back-to-back short corners but the Indian dragflick battery of Rupinder Pal Singh, who took four tries, and Raghunath failed to break the Dutch defence led by goalkeeper Jaap Stockmann.

The coach, however, was not convinced of the final try that went for a video referral.

"Nevertheless, we got our chances to equalise in the last four and half minutes. Unfortunately the last one was held on the line by the defender. Small areas we're still lacking. But we showed that we're close to top sides in the world. It's encouraging," said Oltmans.

"The match had many faces today. Chase game in the first quarters, both teams were well organised and did not give away anything. The second was more or less the same. The third quarter came alive through the only goal that the Netherlands scored. We took over the initiative quite well after that and we scored a goal. We even had chances to score.

"I feel we got too many cards. When we got the cards the momentum was on our side. We came back 1-1 and started to have good attacks. I think that was a game changer," he explained.