Hockey teams vow to make Ghana proud
Fresh from their victory in the Hockey World League Round 1 tournament held at the Theodosia Okoh Hockey Stadium in Accra, both the national male and female hockey teams have set their eyes on the Round 2 tournament .
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While the males will be playing at Bangladesh in the Round 2 tournament, the female team are scheduled to storm Spain for the same tournament slated in February next year .
Speaking to Daily Graphic in an interview moments after their feat, the skippers of the national teams, Gertrude Inkoom and Nsalbini Salya assured to make the nation proud to prove that hockey as a sport had a lot to offer the state.
“ We were very happy for the maximum support by the fans throughout the tournament. We were highly motivated, especially during our match against Kenya when we were finding it difficult to score.
That is why we are focusing on our training to enable us put up a splendid performance in the Spain tournament “ Gertrude Inkoom assured.
She however called for corporate support to enable the team undertake series of international friendlies before the tournament begins.
“ We need to pitch our strength against the best teams, and we cannot do so in Ghana, hence the need for individuals , firms and organisations top sponsor us undertake such international friendlies” she pleaded.
For his part, Nsalbini Salya said winning the Hockey World League Round 1 tournament in Accra had motivated them to go all out when they participate in the Bangladesh tournament.
“ We identified some weaknesses in our team which need to be corrected before we go to Bangladesh” he noted.
He mentioned penalty corners as a weakness ,and said effort would be made to correct such weakness as soon as possible.
” In our match against Nigeria, we had more than eight penalty corners but couldn’t utilise any. In tournaments of such nature, this should not happen. That is why we have to play more international friendly matches to learn more strategies of converting such goal scoring opportunities” he said.