Men’s Semi-Finals: What they say…..

The four men’s semi-finalists are now known and with three of the pre-tournament favourites: Germany, Netherlands and England being joined by Ireland, it promises to be a fantastic final four.

Each of the teams have shown what they can do in the pool stages but now, with the medal matches in sight they will be keen to step their game up to the next level in order to take home the prize they all came for. We caught up with some of the coaches and players of our final four, and here’s what they had to say looking ahead:

Craig Fulton, Ireland Men’s Coach:

“We knew after coming out of Antwerp we had a good unit. We can defend for long periods of time and when we create opportunities we can take them. We’re becoming a very difficult side to play against, which is what we want. We have a lot of belief and resilience in the team and we’ve shown that in the games here so far. We’ve played some good teams who are higher ranked than us. We weren’t expected to get anything from those games but on the day we did our jobs. We took Germany to the wire, but the difference between success and failure is not much as we showed in the games with Germany and Belgium.

We want to be in the top ten, we want a decent sponsor; we want to show what a good side we are and that people should believe in us. We have to do that with what we have, which is not very much right now. A lot of guys put in a lot of sacrifice which no one sees but I’m delighted they get the rewards for it.

Semi finals are a one-off and we’re pretty good at one offs. We’re keeping our feet on the ground. We’ll enjoy it as it’s taken a long time to get Ireland here, but we want to finish the job we’ve started and get a medal.”

Moritz Furste, Germany:

“We’ve won three times in the pool so we should be happy but we aren’t. We haven’t played as well as we can. We’ve scored some goals but not played as we wanted to. We are results focused but focused on the performance and achieving our goals, too. We need to improve in this tournament.

It’s amazing to play England in front of a home crowd. For me as a hockey fan, playing England is the best thing for the tournament. We’re going into a hard few days it will be tough to get the wins we need. We are confident we know what we can we can do, but we need to gout and do it. We will prepare ourselves and see where that leaves us.”

Robert van Der Horst, Netherlands:
“We have had a good start. We had some hard games but we have played well and not conceded any goals so we’re pleased with that.  Momentum is important because you need to get into your flow and be consistent.
We are in a competitive tournament; the best teams in the world are here apart from Australia. We saw Ireland a few weeks ago, and they are a very good side. Hard to beat and hard to break down. We are looking forward to playing them but we know they are a dangerous team. It will be an exciting weekend of top hockey. We have a good feeling about our chances, but you cannot say too much. We did our job in the pool stages; we’ll see where we are after that.

Ashley Jackson, England

“We’ve played well against Spain but it still feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity because we play the Germans in the semi-final now. We’re confident going into the game but we have to avoid a repeat of the lack of performance that happened against the Dutch. That was really frustrating but it was nice to bounce back from that in the next game.

It was very important to come out and play well against Spain, but we need to do that in the next game, too. If we play like we did against the Netherlands we’ll be playing for third and fourth. We’re capable of bouncing back from that but that’s not the team we want to be. We want to be the team that plays well in the semi-final and is competing for gold medals.

I have 100% faith in our team. I know that a solid performance will give us a great chance of getting to the final. We are certainly good enough to win, it’s an exciting time.”

The stage is set and the best in Europe to lock horns and fight for a place in the final. It should be an exciting few days of top class hockey.

If you would like to know the schedule click here.
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