18-member Irish men’s hockey squad announced for FIH Champions Challenge II
Irish men’s hockey team announced its 18-member for 2011 FIH Champions Challenge II, which is going to be played in Lille, France from July 2 to 10.
The Irish team will play in a total of six games in the event which will last for a total of nine days. The Irish team is third highest ranked team in the event after China and France.
The team has selected after a long assessment of the players having in mind their current performance in the recently held events.
“The Champions Challenge II event provides our squad with another great opportunity to test our depth of quality inside a few weeks. As a squad we are fortunate to be able to absorb the absence of various players who cannot take continual leave from work
as well as affording us an opportunity to rest various players after two prior events and lengthy training camps. This team will take a good degree of momentum with them into the Challenge II and we will expect to make continual improvements through every
game,” Paul Revington, the coach of the Irish team, stated his views on the selection of the team for the upcoming event in France.
Following is the 18-member Irish squad for the upcoming FIH Champions Challenge II tournament:
Ronan Gormley (C), David Ames, Peter Blakeney, Joe Brennan , Chris Cargo, Peter Caruth, David Fitzgerald, Alan Giles, Paul Gleghorne, Conor Harte, David Harte, John Jackson, Stuart Loughrey, Eugene Magee, Geoff McCabe, Andy McConnell, Gareth Watkins and
Michael Watt.
Meanwhile, the team will be coached by Paul Revington with the assistance of Arul Anthony and Peter Jackson will be the manager of the team. The other staff includes David Richardson (Physio), Jonny Caren (S&C/Video) and Tristan Seaton-Stedham.
The tournament will be played on a round robin format, among eight teams, which are divided into two pools of four teams. Pool A consists of China, United States of America and Czech Republic, while Ireland has been placed in Pool B along with France, Russia
and Scotland.
Each team will play once one game against each other in its pool in the opening round which will last for three days. The top placed teams in each pool will play against the fourth ranked teams across the pools, while the second placed and third placed teams
will play against each other, respectively. The winners of these matches will qualify for the semi-final where they will play for the medals, while the losers of these cross over fixtures will play placement games for position 5th to 8th.
It will be interesting to see how Ireland performs in this tournament and meet the expectation of their coach.
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