Bhubaneswar, Feb 6 : The Australian Men's Hockey Team landed in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday to begin their FIH Hockey Pro League 2023/24 campaign. The hockeyroos finished seventh in the previous campaign with 19 points.

The FIH Hockey Pro League 2023/24 (Men) is scheduled to take place at the Kalinga Hockey Stadium in Bhubaneswar from February 10 to February 16, before moving to the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, where the league will continue from February 19 to February 25. 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 February 11, followed by a clash with Ireland on February 13. They will take on hosts India on February 15, before they face the Netherlands in the last match of the Bhubaneswar leg on February 16.

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.

(ANI)

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