The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : A novelty of sorts planned for Doha Asian Games

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Wednesday, Jun 01, 2005

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Sport - Hockey

A novelty of sorts planned for Doha Asian Games

Hockey Correspondent

Since Qatar does not have a national federation, it has been exempted from fielding a team in the competition

Kuala Lumpur: The hockey competition of the next Asian Games at Doha will be held in an indoor stadium. This will be a novelty of sorts and the facility is expected to conform to all the rules and regulations laid for such experiments by the International Hockey Federation and Asian Hockey Federation, P. Alagendra, Secretary General, AHF, said.

The facility is expected to be ready by September 2005 and a test event is also being planned.

Since Qatar does not have a national federation, it has been exempted from fielding a team in the competition. As many as 10 men's and eight women's sides will take part in the event in which Korea and China are the defending men's and women's champions.

The Doha Asian Games Organising Committee is co-ordinating with the FIH and AHF which will form an Organising Committee, apart from a technical committee, to conduct the event. Tayab Ikram, Continental Development Officer, FIH, is the official co-ordinator. Both Tayab and Alagendra, who visited the venue, were satisfied with the progress made.

The Council was planning to have a detailed discussion with the Director of Sports Department of DAGOC, Khaleel al Jabir, in the presence of the FIH Event Manager, Dennis Meredith, on Tuesday. However, the latter expressed his inability to attend the meeting owing to official work with the OCA in Doha. Meredith will be in Chennai in the next few days to assess the preparations for the Champions Trophy in December.

Asia Cup in 2009

The next Asia Cup is scheduled to be held in 2009. With the FIH stipulating that no qualifying event should be organised 21 months before or within 12 months of the main competitions (Olympics and World Cups), the Asia Cup had to be hosted accordingly. India is an automatic qualifier for the World Cup in Germany next year after the victory in Malaysia in 2003.

A long session on all issues pertaining to development will be held at the council meeting at Macau in August 2005. Alagendra said that the AHF was paying more attention to the quality of supervision and appointed Regional Umpires Development Officers in this regard.

India's A.S. Bawa (South Asia) and Ku Ku Walia (Central Middle East) are in the panel along with H.S. Dilon (Hong Kong) and Rajaraman (Singapore).

As part of the development, the AHF council approved the Players of the Year programme. The following have been selected for 2004: Men: Sohail Abbas (Pakistan); Women: Yang Li (China); Juniors: Men: Adrian D'Souza (India) and Kin Jung Eon (Korea).

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