Top female hockey players will be in action this weekend as they bid to lead their teams to club glory. World Cup and Olympic champions Maartje Paumen, Margot van Geffen, Carlien Dirkse van der Heuval and Lidewij Welton are just some of the players competing in the Euro Hockey Club Championships at Bilthoven, Utrecht.
In a bid to be crowned the best in Europe and take away the €5,000 winning cheque, teams from the Netherlands, England, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Russia will be playing a knockout round on Friday followed by two semi finals and a final on Saturday and Sunday. This is the first time such a format has been used to decide the championship.
All the teams will also receive ranking points depending upon where they finish in the competition, to enable them to qualify for the 2016 event.
There are some enticing and intriguing encounters in store, with some of the best female players in Europe playing in the competition.
Irish club University College Dublin (UCD) are ranked seventh out of the eight teams, but the team has good form in European competition, winning the European Club Championships in Sicily in 2013, and they hope that Irish eyes will be singing when they take on the German league champions KTHC Rot-Weiss Koln.
Netherland’s international star, Carlien Dirkse van der Heuvel, who is playing for Dutch team SCHC, says: “We always play only against other Dutch league clubs. The EHCCC gives us the chance to play against champions from other countries. These are really good team. Our opponents on Friday are the English team Canterbury, who have as many as five internationals in their side. This is a great challenge.”
The other two knock out games are between Club Campo de Madrid and English club Surbiton, whose England and Great Britain stars Georgie Twigg, Holly Webb and Giselle Ansley will be looking to play influential roles; while the host team Hertogenbosch, complete with ace drag flicker Maartje Paumen, take on the challenge from Russia’s CSP Izmailovo.
Captain of the Russian team, Timshina Galina, said: “We are excited to be playing in this competition, against some worthy competition. It should make for some interesting games.”
