FIH's Hockey Pro League - (Men's and Women's)

[srini]

All other teams have been pretty inconsistent too. Bottom placed Ireland beat Belgium 4-1 but were defeated by Germany 0-7. On their day any team seems to be able to beat any other team in modern hockey!

[sameerph]

Our men lost 2-3 against Germany yesterday. Watched the match, some brilliant play but also some defensive lapses. Jarmanpreet missed a sitter in last minute, else could have ended in a draw.

Will be up against GBR today.

[ssp]

Yes, horrible miss by Jarmanpreet and a soft 1st goal conceded by our keeper. Otherwise, usual stuff. More cards (2-0) and conceded 13 PCs and won only 4. The umpiring is always going to ensure this kind of stuff. The GB game will be very tough as they hold possession better than us and they have the 'best umpires' always. Even more so than the other European or Oceanic teams!

On this evidence, a QF place is the maximum at Paris. We have too many weaknesses in attack and defence and are overly reliant on Harmanpreet's PCs. If he has an off day, we can lose to any team in our pool.

As an aside, Pakistan lost 2-1 to NZ and suffered awful umpiring calls as well. It's a total joke.

[ssp]

Lost 3-2 to GB in both men's and women's games today.
Pretty much as I expected. We are probably going to finish 6th or 7th in the pro league for men and 7th in the women's.
That's fair. My gripe is that we could have finished in similar position for the men even if we had experimented with new players. We definitely missed this opportunity

[Sin Hombre]

We will have to reduce our hockey medal odds to 0.1. We need to beat the likes of GB and Germany to win a medal at the Olympics.

[ssp]

We have zero chance of a medal in Paris. Fulton is a poor choice of coach. We select too many donkeys and the umpires do the rest.

Best hope is a horrible outing and a clear out of the garbage players (Mandeep, Akashdeep, Jarmanpreet, Raj Kumar Pal, Amit Rohidas , Lalit and Shamsher), new coach and a domestic hockey league. Until we create the latter, we will be rubbish. Holding 1-2 month long camps is a joke.

Even if we sort out the fixable issues, we will be screwed by the umpiring.

The women badly need a PC specialist, serious improvement on physical strengthening and speed and (like the men) some common sense selections

[Sin Hombre]

ssp you are the anti-PKB and the eternal pessimist . Umpiring at the Olympics has been better in the last decade and we are fortunately in a group with our two nemesis teams Belgium and Australia, which means we will have to beat GB, Germany or Spain in the quarters. That's still a 50/50 match.

[sameerph]

Yes, we will have to beat Argentina, New Zealand and Ireland in group stage ( assuming we lose to Australia and Belgium) to finish third and than beat Germany/GBR in QF and than one of Australia/Netherlands/Belgium in bronze match. That is going to be our road to medal at Paris.

Quite tough but not impossible. 0.10 is fair probability.

[sameerph]

FIH pro League restarts today in Bhubaneswar for both men and women.

Our women started with a good 3-2 win against England.

[sameerph]

Our men lost 1-3 to Spain. That is a disappointing loss against the team whom we had beaten in the Paris Olympics bronze medal match.

[arjun2761]

I hope we are playing some of younger players in these matches. Perfect opportunity for them to develop even if we take a few losses as a result.

[prasen9]

I don't know but if I were to guess, we are not although I hope with you too. Indian selectors are notorious for not having these types of foresight. I hope times are a changing.

[ssp]

by arjun2761 » Sat Feb 15, 2025 5:35 pm

I hope we are playing some of younger players in these matches. Perfect opportunity for them to develop even if we take a few losses as a result.

Nope. Only Rajinder & Arshdeep were newcomers, the rest were the same old faces. So, our selectors are being as dumb as ever by wasting time on the ageing players and proven failures.

Our women's win was pleasing, but England have brought several new players. Both of the goals we conceded were due to several mistakes in defence, especially the 1st one.

let's hope for a better day today.

[prasen9]

And tomorrow.

[sameerph]

Our women drew 2-2 with England in normal time but lost penalty shootout.