World Cup Group Stages Complete for Wales & England

A week into the FIH Odisha Men’s World Cup in India and our home nation representatives concluded the group stage of the tournament yesterday.  England and Wales were drawn together with hosts India and Spain, prior to the tournament Pool D had already picked up the ‘group of death’ nickname.   

Wales have been on a steady climb up the world rankings over the last few years, and in their first World Cup they left their best performance in the pool for the game against India.  At the end of the third quarter, the score was tied at 2-2 with Wales coming back from 2-0 down thanks to goals from Gareth Furlong and Jacob Draper.  India edged ahead in the final quarter to win out, but the final score 4-2 did not reflect the performance Wales had put in.   After earlier defeats to England and Spain, Wales now move on to the classification games for 9^th to 16^th place and will be looking to see how high they can finish and further improve their world ranking, which is now up to 14. 
 
For full match reports, head to Hockey Wales’s website here. Wales next match is Monday 23 January at 1.30pm. 

 
England finished the group in first place over India thanks to a superior goal difference and now head straight into the quarter-finals.  Five of the squad have scored so far including 3 for Liam Ansell and 2 each for Phil Roper and Nick Bandurak. At the other end some great saves from Ollie Payne have seen England produce three consecutive clean sheets, beating Wales 5-0, drawing 0-0 with India and then defeating Spain 4-0.  England now have 5 days to prepare, and will look to see who comes out of the cross-over games as quarter-final opponents. 
 
For full match reports head to England Hockey’s website here and England will play their QF on Wednesday 25 January at 1:30pm.  

Photo credits: World Sport Pics