By JiMMM -
November 25th 2009 @ 1:47am
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Kookaburras to hit it off at the Champions Trophy
We’re just a few short days away from the hit off to the 2009 version of the men’s champions trophy event in Melbourne, and with the Hockeyroos falling down the world rankings, the pressure is on the Kookaburras to perform.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tournament, the best six teams in the world will play each other once over eight days, with an additional finals day.
The countries represented this year are (in order of world ranking) Germany, Australia, Spain, Netherlands, Korea and England.
Australia will go into this tournament as the clear favourites, given their strong form over the year, the home ground advantage, and being the defending champions. However, there are questions over the depth of the squad, with six of the squad making their international debuts, and the gap between the end of the Australian season and the tournament.
Germany, as the current Olympic champions, and current number one ranked team in the world, are going to be a strong, and will be looking to regain the champions trophy. The Germans also have the added attraction of overtaking the Kookaburras as the nation with the most titles if they win this year.
Spain, as one of the powerhouses of international hockey, will go into this tournament with nothing to lose, and have the aim of improving of their one champions trophy title.
The Netherlands, as the only nation with a professional hockey competition, will go into this tournament as a short priced challenger for the title. The Dutch team has a strong tradition of winning this tournament, winning 4 of the 9 tournaments this decade. And with arguably the best player in the world, Teun De Nooijer still playing, they cannot be written off.
Although they have appeared in the last two Champions trophy tournaments, the Korean team are the great unknown. Although the Koreans are currently ranked five in the world (no mean feat), I don’t think they are serious challengers for the title.
The last nation in is England, just scraping into the tournament ahead of Pakistan, because of their results at the Beijing games. In spite of this, England won the European Nations Cup, beating Germany and the Netherlands in the process.
If you are looking for a dark horse for this tournament, look no further, and with the added spice of it being England, it could result in some spectacular games.
So with what looks like an intriguing tournament, and the Crawford report declaring that hockey is part of the national psyche, we should be looking forward to a packed house at the State Netball and Hockey Centre in Melbourne.
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Mossy said | November 25th 2009 @ 9:18pm | Report comment
Great to see some hockey on the roar. Champions Trophy is a wonderful tournament with a best of the best playing a round robin followed by finals.
Will be interested to see how the Kookaburras perform after the honeymoon of The Coach & new squad.
I thoroughly agree that England are ‘coming’ on the international scene. With the build up to 2012 and the Euro League maturing, the poms will (unfortunately) start to push the big four of Ned, Ger, Aust, Spain.
This aside, the ‘challenge’ system is in for this tournament as a trial with teams being able to call for a video review when previously this has been exclusive to umpire use.
With a recent subscription to Foxtel under the belt, I am looking forward to watching hockey on the box & reading some more stick & ball on The Roar.
JiMMM said | November 26th 2009 @ 8:07am | Report comment
The challenge system will be an interesting sideshow to teh tournament, and is probably very much up for debate (see jamie Dwyer’s comments yesterday about teh system, when I can track down the link I will post it). However I think the FIH have it wrong in following Crickets example and should follow the EHL’s.
The EHL model of 1 challenge per half at least makes for some more interesting situations (in the last version I remeber one team holding onto thier second challenge until well into Extra Time).
It would be good to see it on Foxtel, if I could justify the expense of 30 odd other channels of Rubbish just so I can outlay more to get the channels that I want.
DaniE said | December 5th 2009 @ 12:32am | Report comment
So has anybody been to watch the games? I’m not getting it on any channels… I see Australia has dropped a game but any opinions from Roarers on how the Kookas are doing?