LAUSANNE: The International Hockey Federation (FIH) announced Thursday that the women’s national teams of India and Spain will join the FIH Hockey Pro League – “Hockey at its Best” – for Season 3, which is starting on 13 October with the title holders, world campions and Olympic Gold medallists, The Netherlands, taking on Belgium.
Both teams will replace – for this season only – Australia and New Zealand, who last month announced that they were no longer able to participate to this season’s FIH Hockey Pro League (as well as the upcoming FIH Hockey Junior World Cups and the FIH Hockey Indoor World Cup) due to COVID-related international travel restrictions put in place by their respective governments. However, Australia and New Zealand will join Pro League again for Season 4.
Whenever possible, the female squads of India and Spain will play on the same dates and venues as their male counterparts, who are already part of FIH’s global home-and-away league, which involves most of the best nations in world hockey.
With India and Spain, the third edition of the FIH Hockey Pro League welcomes two teams who played brilliantly at the recent Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. India reached the fourth spot of the Olympic tournament, while Spain only narrowly missed the last four (losing to Great Britain in a shoot-out in the ¼ finals).
The match schedule of the FIH Women’s Hockey Pro League is available here…
FIH will communicate the final list of teams and match schedule for the FIH Men’s Hockey Pro League shortly.
