Africa-Press – Namibia. THE countdown to the 2023 Indoor Hockey World Cup in South Africa has started after the pools for the tournament were released yesterday.
Namibia will be competing in both the men and women’s competitions which will be held in Pretoria from 5-11 February next year, with the women probably receiving a more favourable draw than the men.
Namibia’s women, who are ranked ninth in the world, have been drawn in Pool B, along with Ukraine (4th), the Czech Republic (5), Kazakhstan (11), Belgium (15) and Canada (16), while Pool A will be contested by the Netherlands (2), Austria (8), Australia (9), USA (12), SA (14) and New Zealand which is unranked.
It will be the second consecutive World Cup for Namibia’s women after they came ninth in Berlin four years ago and coach Erwin Handura said he was optimistic that they could do better this time around.
“I think we are in a very good group – Ukraine and the Czech Republic are the highest ranked teams in our group and we played against them both at the 2018 World Cup. I think if we prepare well we have a good chance of finishing in the top two in that group, because last time we beat Ukraine 3-2, and although we lost 6-2 to the Czech Republic, we could have done much better. We started off playing defensively and they scored five goals in the first half, but then we changed our tactics and played an all-out attacking game and put them under pressure,” he said.
“I have always wanted to play Kazakhstan because we have never played them, so this is a chance for us and they are the Asian champions, but I’m confident if we prepare well we should be able to beat them. The other teams in our group, Belgium and Canada, were not at the previous world cup, so I think we have a great chance to finish in the top two or three in our group,” he added.
“I hope our preparations will go according to plan, but of course it will be disturbed now with the field team going to Zimbabwe to play in the Afcon qualifiers, and the majority of our indoor players are also in that squad.
On the one hand it’s good because all these players are now fit, so they will be in top shape when they come back around the fifth of September when we will really start focussing on the Indoor World Cup and we will also have the Hockey Fives World Cup qualifiers in November,” he said.
Handura said they were planning some preparation matches ahead of the world cup.
“South Africa have asked us to play a test series – we first wanted to find out if they were in our group at the world cup, but luckily they are not, so I think we can easily play five tests against them. The United States also want to play us, but we must still work out the details. We will probably have to go to the USA or we’ll meet somewhere in Europe, but I think we can also play five tests against them,” he said.
Namibia’s men, meanwhile, have been drawn in a tough group in Pool A, along with the defending champions Austria, who are the top-ranked nation in the world.
Namibia, who are ranked 16th in the world, will also compete against the Netherlands (7), Belgium (8), Kazakhstan (13) and New Zealand who are not ranked.
Pool B consists of Iran (3), the Czech Republic (4), Australia (10), South Africa (11), USA (18) and Argentina (19).
Namibia’s men’s coach Trevor Cormack said they were excited and looking forward to the world cup.
“We are very excited – it’s great to see the pools now, to see who we can prepare against. Unfortunately half of our squad is in South Africa so currently we just have the Windhoek-based guys who have been training once a week, just to get back into the swing of things. The Namibian field league is also coming up now so we need to work around that, and then we’ll start picking it up until we are in full flight from November right through to the World Cup,” he said.
“We are excited about the pools, but with Germany withdrawing and we have no idea why at this stage, we are still in a difficult pool. We’ve got Holland and Austria that are really competitive, but we’ll see how it goes with regard to our preparations. Hopefully we can get some financial backing so that we can execute and fulfil all our plans we can execute and fulfil and then and make sure that we are fully prepared for the World Cup,” he added.
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