Scotland: Looking forward to an exciting opening and a thrilling finish to the 2014 Commonwealth Games scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, both Terry Walsh (Chief Coach, Men Hockey Team) and Neil Hawgood (Chief Coach, Women Hockey Team) are confident of a podium finish by their respective teams.


Going by the vigorous training sessions that both the teams are undergoing, the respective team coaches feel that this will turn out to be a rewarding tournament for Indian hockey. While Terry Walsh is looking at a united ‘team’ performance by the Men's team, Chief Coach Neil Hawgood elated about the Women team’s confidence.


Speaking on the team’s preparations, Chief Coach Terry Walsh (Men Hockey Team) said, “The team has now familiarized with the games village and playing venue. The training level in the past one week has been encouraging as the group is focussed at building towards the performance stage. We have a reshape strike group and that continues to grow in understanding and quality.”


He further added, “The first objective is to accumulate sufficient points to go into the semi-final crossovers. Where our rhythm and skill execution has been of very good quality, our penalty corner conversion will be a key component in the whole process. Rupinder Pal Singh is overcoming a minimal adductor tweak and V R Raghunath has been executing very efficiently. Ofcourse the key is match situation conversions.”


Speaking on the high spirited Women’s team preparations, Chief Coach Neil Hawgood (Women Hockey Team) said, “The team is feeling quite confident and is in good spirits at the moment, with training and village life going along quite smoothly. We are now narrowing our focus to the finer points that will prove to be crucial in our matches and making sure that we are all working together towards our goal. Our Penalty Corner work is progressing, with some good results in Malaysia and we are confident that we have enough ideas about the style and execution of our penalty corners and if executed well, then we should see positive results.”


The Women hockey team will take on Canada on 24th July 2014 and the Men Hockey Team will clash with Wales on 25th July 2014, in their first match, in the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Scotland.