Hockey: Towns retires from Black Sticks

Captain Simon Towns announced his retirement and striker Phillip Burrows is sidelined for six months in a shocking fallout from the Oceania Cup men's hockey tournament in Fiji.

The tournament ended when the Black Sticks lost 1-5 to Australia at Suva on Saturday but there was more serious news to follow as New Zealand look to the Commonwealth Games and beyond.

Towns, 33, dropped a bombshell by announcing his retirement from the international game, while a blood clot will lay Burrows low until the middle of next year.

They have been two of New Zealand's best players over the past decade.

The final was Towns' 217th international and ended a 14-year spell in the New Zealand team.

He said there had been a lot of talk during the tournament about when he would be back in New Zealand for a Commonwealth Games camp.

"I felt a bit of a fraud not telling the players but decided it was better to wait until after the final," he told The Press newspaper.

In the past five years Towns has been an integral part of the New Zealand team in the pivotal centre-half position and his experience will be hard to replace.

His father and national coach Kevin Towns was non-committal about who will take over the crucial role but said both Ryan Archibald and Blair Hopping were contenders.

"I decided that I wasn't performing as well as I should be and there are other things in my life I want to do," Towns said.

"I decided three weeks ago that I was going to retire and I wasn't going to play in this tournament, but with Dion Gosling also retiring and Wayne McIndoe unavailable, I talked with Dad and we decided it would be better to play in this series."

Towns had overcome a hand injury earlier this year that kept him out of the game for three months and he said the training required to get back up to speed was getting harder.

"You know when it's time to go, but the last five years have been the most fun I've had since I've been playing," he said.

"But the next year is going to be a busy one and the time was right to retire now."

Towns, who is based in London, said he would continue playing in the English national league until Christmas but was undecided if he would play after that.

He said it was disappointing to finish with such a comprehensive loss against Australia. He had only one win against Australia in the 14 years he was in the national team, and that was six years ago.

Towns said his greatest thrill was New Zealand's 7-1 demolition of Pakistan in the semifinal of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002.

A combination of lengthy air travel and intensive playing and training are believed to have caused Burrow's blood clot to the upper arm which saw him hospitalised on Wednesday.

The enforced layoff means Burrows is likely to miss New Zealand's route to qualify for the World Cup in Germany next September.

They are now bound for a qualifying tournament in China in April.

- nzpa