Hockey keen to gain ground

The World League semifinals for both men and women, which South Africa will host from July 3 to 24, will minister greatly to the country’s need for top-class hockey and the South African Hockey Association have named their extended squads for the event.

Several top-10 nations will take part in the tournament, which will be hosted by Wits Hockey Club, with qualification for the World Cup and Commonwealth Games next year also up for grabs.

South Africa’s largely politically-inspired absence from the Rio Olympics last year has cost both their men’s and women’s teams a massive number of ranking points and Fabian Gregory’s men’s team are now ranked 15th and Sheldon Rostron’s women are 13th.

“We’ve lost all our ranking points by not being at the Olympics, but the World League semifinals are a big event and we still have a lot of time. The key thing is that we give ourselves good enough opportunity to gain world ranking points for automatic Commonwealth Games and World Cup qualification,” Gregory said.

Australia, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, Ireland and Spain, all in the top-10, will be taking part in the men’s tournament, while England, Argentina, the USA and Germany will be headlining the women’s competition.

South Africa’s women will take on India, Argentina, China and the US, while the men are up against Ireland, Germany, Egypt and Belgium.

The top four teams will qualify automatically for the World Cup, but there are other bites at that cherry available and South Africa will be delighted just to start the road back to the top-10.

“Our world ranking being lower does not make things easier for us, but there is a total plan in place to rejuvenate our competitiveness. Not playing enough games is killing us due to a lack of sponsorship, but we have the talent, we just need to spend more time working together as a team,” said Mickey Gordon, the convenor of the national women’s selection panel.