Long Ditton-based Surbiton will have no less than seven current and two former players, as well as a former director of coaching, on international duty this week.
All five of the club’s remaining Beijing Olympians - Richard Alexander, Matt Daly, Ben Hawes, Rob Moore and James Tindall - are expected to be in England’s 18-man squad from which the teams to play a three-match test series against India at the University of Birmingham this Wednesday (29 July, 18.30), Friday (31 July, 18.30) and Sunday (2 August, 11.00) will be selected.
In addition two current and two former Surbiton players will be competing in the Men's EuroNations Trophy at Wrexham, starting this Saturday (1 August) and concluding the following Saturday (8 August). Andy Cornick and Chris Bowen (who played for Havant last season) are in the Welsh squad, while Allan Dick and Fergus Dunn (who played for FC Barcelona last season) are in Scotland's squad, whose team coach is former Surbiton coach Jon Royce, director of sport at Kingston Grammar School.
Their two teams are both in the Trophy’s’ four-team pool B and meet at 5.30pm on the first evening (tomorrow, Saturday). The other nations in their pool are the Czech Republic and Switzerland, while Belarus, Ireland, Italy and Russia make up pool A. The tournament’s overall winners and runners up will be promoted to the main 2011 EuroHockey Nations Championship, this year’s running of which England will be competing in at Amsterdam from 22-30 August.
Surbiton’s Daly, Hawes, Moore and Tindall have already played in at least one of two performance practice games against the whole Indian squad of 22 players to warm-up the Birmingham venue. On Sunday afternoon Hawes, Moore and Tindall were in England’s 18-man squad that “won” the first of three 25-minute periods 3-0 and 2-1 before drawing the third 1-1 as the Indians ran the jet lag out of their legs. Hawes scored in the first session and Tindall in the second, both from open play.
It was a much closer affair on Monday afternoon over the normal two 35-minute halves, with England’s 19-man squad “winning” 3-2 after the Indians had pulled back a two-goal deficit to equalise by half time.
Daly joined Hawes and Moore for this game, with Tindall sitting it out. Alexander was not present for either game, but joined England’s full 28-man European training squad on Tuesday for the three tests.
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