Experience meets youth from Saturday onwards at the 34th Champions Trophy which also marks the start of preparations for the next world championships and Olympics for the major field hockey powers. Led by World Player Jamie Dwyer, record 12-times winners and hosts Australia are after a fifth straight title at the elite event and keen to erase a painful semi-final defeat at the London 2012 Games against later Olympic champions Germany.
But Kookaburras coach Ric Charlesworth is also looking ahead at the 2014 worlds in The Hague, the same year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2016 Olympics. "We've got a good squad of quality players and I want them to contest very fiercely for spots in the team so they can be on the podium at the world cup, the Commonwealth Games and the next Olympics," Charlesworth said.
On paper, Australia's group B appears the stronger of the two as it also features Olympic silver medallists Netherlands, rising Belgium and Pakistan. Dutch coach Paul van Ass is fielding his strongest selection, minus the trio of Teun de Nooijer, Floris Evers and Roderick Weusthof, who retired after the Olympics.
Another Dutchman, Marc Lammers, has started the Belgium coaching job with the task of turning the rising hockey into a Rio 2016 medal contender. Pakistan are always good for a surprise, boasting 392-times capped Waseem Ahmed and Shakeel Abasi, who has played for his country 277 times.
The London gold medallists Germany run into India, New Zealand and England in group A, with coach Markus Weise giving youth a chance with a largely inexperienced team including a completely different defence than at the Olympics. "This is about finding further players who can attack in the first-team squad," Weise said. The same applies to England, whose captain Barry Middleton has almost half the amount of caps than the other 17 players together.
New Zealand coach Colin Batch has at least some experienced Black Sticks in his line-up and India coach Michael Nobbs has called on his team to play a similar style than Germany in order to return to the glory of the past. Weise named the outcome "difficult to predict because all teams are starting from zero." The nine-day tournament starts with a round-robin group stage, followed by knockout rounds from the quarter-finals onwards. The quarter-final winners continue in a knockout format to determine the champion on December 9, the losers play out places five to eight in the same format.
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