Pak hockey team leaves for Holland

KARACHI: Pakistan senior hockey team was to leave early Sunday morning for Netherlands to participate in the last edition of Champions Trophy.

Team manager Hasan Sardar told ‘The News’ on Saturday that the players were going in the big event without having any pressure of facing big teams, which include Olympic champions Argentina, World Champions Australia.

“We have directed the players to focus on their game and show all their telnet irrespective of who the rivals are. If they play well and lose the match with dignity, showing fighting spirit, that’s no problem because we are rebuilding our team.

“Champions Trophy will prove a turning point because many positive things are going to happen during this event. We will use GSP technology; we are going there two weeks ahead of the event and will have a training camp,” he added.

“Coaches of goalkeeping and penalty corner execution have been hired to finalise the preparation of our goalkeepers and PC drag flickers.

“We will play five practice matches before Champions Trophy. In those matches and then in the event proper we will experiment with different combinations which will help us shape up the team.

“Our first match will be against India and definitely we will go all out against them. In Commonwealth Games, we drew the match against them. In Netherlands, we will defeat them because now our physical fitness is much better and we will not repeat the mistakes,” said the manager.