FIH Champions Challenge II – Winner and Runner-up Teams
The nine-day hockey gala, namely FIH Champions Challenge II, completed on Sunday (July 02 to July 10, 2011) with Ireland coming out victorious over the host, France, by two goals and lifted the title of the eight-nation tournament.
The Irish men marked four goals against the two and clinched the title for the first time. Irish team was runner-up squad in the first edition of the Champions Challenge II, held back in 2009. They were beaten by Poland in the finals in the penalty-stroke
round. On the other side, the French team earned a bronze medal after it defeated Malaysia in the play-off match. Both the medal winners of the first edition were at their best in the just-concluded event and showed outstanding performances in the group matches.
Ireland
Interestingly, the Irish team had not lost any game out of total six in the 2011 Champions Challenge II. On the way to title-victory, the Irish team won the opening game against Scotland by a single goal, 3-2, while drew the second against France at 2-2.
The Irish men thrashed Russia by four goals, 4-0 and confirmed its place in the quarter-final stage. It defeated USA by four goals 6-2 in quarter-final, while marked a commanding seven-goal, 9-7 victory over Russia in the semi-final contest. The final was
played between Ireland and France, where the former marked a commanding two-goal win over the latter and clinched the title as well as advanced into the Champions Challenge I.
The triumphant, Ireland, scored nineteen goals, while conceded only ten goals in the six appearances. Ronan Gormley, Eugene Magee, Phelie Maguire and William Geoffrey Mccabe were experienced players from Ireland, who served the team to win the title.
Top scorers from the Irish side were Conor Harte (5 goals), Gareth Watkins (4 goals), Eugene Magee (4 goals), Peter Blakeney (3 goals) and Michael Watt (2 goals).
France
Though the host team of France lost the final game to Ireland and missed the chance to win title of the Champions Challenge II, it rendered splendid performance throughout the tournament. Apart from their defeat, they upgraded their
performance from bronze to silver medal in the event, as opposed to previous year's Champions Challenge II.
The host team won four games, drew one and lost only a single game out of last six games. It edged past Russia by a single goal, 5-4 in the opening match while managed a draw against Ireland in the second round match. It defeated Scotland
in the third fixture and overwhelmed Austria by a single goal in the penalty-shootout stage.
In the semi-final game, France took Scotland down by two goals, 5-2 and booked a place in the title-claiming contest against Ireland. However, the French side could not show impressive performance in the last show as compared to the group match, where they
managed a draw. They scored only a couple of goals against the four of their competitor and missed the title.
The French squad scored 19 goals and conceded 17 in the last six games played in the Champions Challenge. Arnaud Becuwe, Francois Scheefer, Martin Genestet and Joost Jansen were some experienced names of the French team.
Among the top scorers from France, Matthieu Catonnet, Jean-Baptiste Pauchet and Fabien Magner scored four goals each in the tournament. Olivier Sanchez and Lucas Sevestre added three goals each in the six games.
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