A surprise from Day 1: India 1, Belgium 1. As one pundit put it: "These kids play hockey as bad as they cook curry." That tells me a lot about how the game of men's field hockey has sunk since the team won a ton of Asian and Olympic gold medals.
Check out my site: www.topofthecircle.com The women's qualifier is this week in New Zealand. The Americans failed to qualify four years ago, but their results in the runup to the WOQ are not promising: losses to the Australia "B" team, to England, and to Ukraine, and a win over New Zealand. The US lost one of their best attacking midfielders to retirement a few weeks ago, and several excellent American players (including the Honda winner for best US college player) are not on the team. I had hope about two months ago that is slipping rapidly by the hour. As of now, I cannot see them qualifying.