Harpal Singh Bedi
Bhubaneswar, The FIH pro Hockey league is very important as it will provide us good training and practice against strong teams ahead of Paris Olympic” said Australia team goalkeeper Andrew Charter son after after the arrival of the team in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.
The hockeyroos finished 7th in the previous campaign with 19 points.
The Pro League (Men) is scheduled to take place at the Kalinga Hockey Stadium in Bhubaneswar from 10th February to 16th February, before moving to the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, where the league will continue from 19th February to 25th February.
Five national teams – Ireland, The Netherlands, India, Spain, and Australia – will participate in the India leg of the League (Men), facing each other once in Bhubaneswar and once in Rourkela.
Australia will take on Spain in their first match of the season on 11th February, followed by a clash with Ireland on 13th February.
They will take on hosts India on 15th February, before they face the Netherlands in the last match of the Bhubaneswar leg on 16th February.
“Preparations have been pretty good, we have been working really hard on our conditioning, we just had a little break over Christmas and we are feeling confident coming in.”Charter celebrated.
“This mini-tournament is enormous for us primarily for the Paris Olympics; we want to use this as an opportunity to train a lot of our structures, test new things and get some experience to our younger team members. So, this is really valuable for us. And we’re putting a lot of importance on it.”
“Everyone’s going to be hard to play against, but Holland are looking pretty good right now. So I think our two games against Holland are going to be a really good test and India with the home support in Bhubaneswar is always going to be hard. The crowd’s going to be massive. So we’re looking forward to it,” he added when asked about the other teams in the league.