FIELD HOCKEY: Ghana Black Sticks hard on training ahead of Hockey Cup of Nations qualifiers

The Black Sticks held a training session in Accra on Wednesday.

Ghana will first host the North-West qualifiers which serves as a qualifier to the 2021 Africa Hockey Cup of Nations with the winner of the Nations cup getting an automatic qualification to the 2022 Hockey World Cup while the runner-up gets another opportunity through the FIH world cup qualifiers.

The qualifiers will see both Men and Women in action with two slots available for each division (winner and runner-up). The host Ghana will, however, represent just their Male National team with the female national team already qualifying for the Nations cup due to their 2nd place ranking on the continent. Countries to fight for the two slots at stake are Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, Togo and host Ghana.

Ghana will then host the junior teams of all African countries at the Junior Africa Hockey Cup in March 2021 with representatives (men and women) from Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Egypt etc for a place at the Junior World Cup later that year.

The North-West qualifiers are slated for 15th – 21st February 2021 with the Junior African Cup slated for 22nd – 28th March, 2021. The Theodosia Okoe Hockey Stadium will host both tournaments.

Ghana is set to host two major hockey events in 2021 amidst the Covid-19. The decision was made by the continent’s Hockey governing body, Africa Hockey Federation (AfHF) during an executive meeting held on Tuesday 4th August, 2020.

The tournaments were originally scheduled for June 2020 and September 2020 but had to be slashed due to the deadly Covid-19 which brought the world to a halt. After thorough considerations and meetings with stakeholders and the Ghana Hockey Association, the AfHF has decided to play both tournaments in 2021.

Source: Nii Upness | BeenieWords