'Enormous Mini-tournament Ahead of Paris Olympics': Australian Men's Hockey Team Arrives for FIH Hockey Pro League

The Australian men’s hockey team has arrived in Bhubaneswar for the FIH Hockey Pro League 2023-24.

The tournament is scheduled to take place at the Kalinga Hockey Stadium in Bhubaneswar from 10th February to 16th February, before moving to the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, where the league will continue from 19th February to 25th February.

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Five national teams – Ireland, The Netherlands, India, Spain, and Australia – will participate in the India leg of the FIH Hockey Pro League 2023/24 (Men), facing each other once in Bhubaneswar and once in Rourkela.

Australia will take on Spain in their first match of the season on 11th February, followed by a clash with Ireland on 13th February. They will take on hosts India on 15th February, before they face the Netherlands in the last match of the Bhubaneswar leg on 16th February.

Australia’s goalkeeper Andrew Charter commented on the importance of the Pro League saying, “Preparations have been pretty good, we have been working really hard on our conditioning, we just had a little break over Christmas and we are feeling confident coming in. This mini-tournament is enormous for us primarily for the Paris 2024 Olympics; we want to use this as an opportunity to train a lot of our structures, test new things and get some experience to our younger team members. So, this is really valuable for us. And we’re putting a lot of importance on it.”

“Everyone’s going to be hard to play against, but Holland are looking pretty good right now. So I think our two games against Holland are going to be a really good test and India with the home support in Bhubaneswar is always going to be hard. The crowd’s going to be massive. So we’re looking forward to it,” he added when asked about the other teams in the league.

The hockeyroos finished 7th in the previous campaign with 19 points.

All matches of the FIH Hockey Pro League 2023-24 will be streamed on JioCinema.

The India matches can also be viewed on Sports18 – Khel.