Hockey: Olympic medal winners face off

The old saying that you can't win a tournament on the opening day but sure as hell can make it hard for yourself by losing, certainly rings true as the Champions Trophy begins at the North Harbour Hockey Stadium this afternoon.

In assembling eight of the world's top nine nations, the public are assured of outstanding, tight matches.

None more so than the tournament opener between two of the three Beijing Olympic medallists.

Australia, defending the trophy they won by beating Great Britain 4-0 in Germany last year, meet Spain. Three years ago Spain claimed silver in losing to Germany in the Olympic final while Australia took bronze.

Australia, the world's highest-ranked team and top seed here, have lost only three of 22 matches with the Spaniards while winning 14. They face the British in the opening game tomorrow.

That replay of last year's final promises to be another battle, although history is against Great Britain as they have yet to beat Australia at a Champions Trophy. Great Britain have an experienced side led by Barry Middleton with 239 caps. He is one of two players with more than 200 international appearances and one of a dozen in the team to have played more than 100.

The other interesting first day match-up will be the third game when New Zealand play Germany. The Germans will be hot favourites given their ranking as second best against New Zealand's seventh, but this is a game Black Sticks coach Shane McLeod has long targeted. He feels that a result, and he would probably settle for a draw, would be a solid launching pad before the hosts square off against the Koreans - seeded at six - in the third game tomorrow.

But the clash of the weekend promises to be the last game tomorrow when Germany meet the Dutch - seeded third. Both teams went away with medals from last year's World Cup in New Delhi with Germany claiming silver and the Netherlands bronze.

Much interest will centre on German midfielder Tobias Hauke who arrived here with 144 international caps including 26 in Champions Trophy appearances. After making his international debut in 2004, Hauke was later part of the gold medal-winning German team at the 2008 Olympics.

The two European powerhouses met in this year's European Champion final with Germany emerging 4-2 victors.

New Zealand lose nothing in the experience stakes with four players boasting 230 or more caps.

They are followed on 152 by Simon Child who, at 23, can expect plenty more.

But they all pale into insignificance when compared with Dutch great Teun de Nooijer who has a whopping 439 international caps including 89 in Champions Trophy matches.

Over the six days of the tournament, the public can rightly expect to see plenty of goal-scoring action with four of the five all-time top scorers in Champions Trophy history in action.

Taeke Taekema (Netherlands, 45 goals), de Nooijer (42), Pakistan's Sohail Abbas (40) and Spain's Santi Freixa (31 goals) can all expect to be among the goals again.

Key match-ups

Today Australia v Spain 12.05pm

Germany v New Zealand 4.05pm

TomorrowGreat Britain v Australia 12.05pm

Netherlands v Germany 6.05pm