Indian Women's Hockey Team To Play At FIH Pro League After Pull Outs

Indian Women's Hockey Team to play FIH Pro League: In a statement on Friday, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) stated that India and Spain will participate in the Women's Hockey Pro League as replacement teams after New Zealand and Australia pulled out of the league. The FIH Women's Hockey Pro League starts on October 13 with Olympic champions in the Netherlands taking on Belgium.

In the statement, the FIH said that they are proud to announce that Indian and Spanish national women's hockey teams will be joining the FIH Hockey Pro League - "Hockey at it's best" for season three. Both teams will replace Australia and New Zealand just for this season, and that the teams from Australia and New Zealand will be back for season 4.

We are glad to announce 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 2021.@rfe_hockey @TheHockeyIndia

More details here 👇#FIHProLeague #HockeyInvites

— International Hockey Federation (@FIH_Hockey) October 8, 2021

The teams from Australia and New Zealand pulled out of the league, including the FIH Hockey Junior World Cups and also the FIH Hockey Indoor World Cup, after the governments of the countries imposed COVID-related international travel restrictions.

According to FIH, the Indian and Spanish teams will, as possible, play on the dates and in the same venues as their male counterparts. The Indian men's hockey team is already a part of the FIH's global home-and-away-league. This league sees the participation of the best nations in world hockey.

Both the Indian and Spanish women's hockey teams and excellent performances at the recent Tokyo Olympics, with the former reaching the semi-finals and the latter closely missing out on the last four matches. The Indian men's hockey team secured a bronze medal at the same.

Thierry Weil, the CEO on FIH stated that it was wonderful to welcome such great teams like India and Spain for the next edition of the FIH Hockey Pro League, after their brilliant performance at Tokyo. He said that it was great for the athletes as well as the fans and thanked Hockey India and the Royal Spanish Hockey Federation on behalf of FIH for accepting their invitations.

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